St Monica'S Home Of Rest

BRISTOL

ST5776 COTE LANE, Stoke Bishop 901-1/28/2129 (South side) 24/02/93 St Monica's Home of Rest

GV II

Almshouses. 1920-25. By Sir G Oatley, for HH Wills and Monica Wills. Squared, coursed Pennant rubble with limestone dressings, half-timbered gables and dormers, diagonally-set ashlar cross-axial and exterior stacks and tiled gabled and hipped roof with overhanging eaves. Cotswold Elizabethan Revival style. Axial plan of 2 linked triangular ranges around courtyards, with projecting NE wing, and a NW entrance block. 2 storeys and attic; 11:4:12:13:12:4:11-window range front elevation. The symmetrical principal elevation facing SW has central section with full-height canted outer and square central bays with crenellated parapets, separated by 3-window sections with fluted Ionic pilasters, first-floor semicircular-arched windows with balconies, and balustrade with heraldic animals, with a cornice carved with beasts' heads. Flanking wings have 2 projecting gables, with a further pair to their front ends with 2-storey canted bays, the attics close-studded with carved barge-boards, and jettied with arched brackets to the ends. The extreme ends terminate in crenellated canted bays as the middle section. Chamfered 1-, 2- and 3-light mullion and transom windows with metal leaded casements. The main entrance has flanking full-height canted bays, tall crenellated parapet with a heraldic panel, and a projecting open porch of 3 semicircular arches with attached Doric columns and an openwork parapet with the patron's initials, and contemporary revolving doors. INTERIOR: axial passage along the rear elevation semicircular-arched tunnel vault, rear open-well stairs in hipped-roofed towers, plain Tudor-arched stone fire surrounds, and a projecting rear theatre with a gallery, segmental-arched roof, deep side cornice on moulded brackets, wainscotting and enriched decorative plasterwork. HISTORICAL NOTE: named after Monica Wills, wife of HH Wills, and built at the same time as Wills Hall (qv) as the latest and largest of the City's almshouse foundations. Details of a design prepared between 1914-18 for a different site were included when the current preferred one became available in 1918. Of considerable landscape value at the northern end of the Downs, with extensive gardens enclosed by a ha-ha; very large, well detailed, but with rather mechanical variation of repeated forms, and the chapel and theatre apart a rather plain interior. Late C19 Domestic Revival and Perpendicular Revival style, using accurate historical details rather than abstracted forms as is more common in late Gothic Revival of the C20, but exceptionally well detailed and forming part of a visually impressive design. St Monica's Chapel and St Monica's Court described separately. (Gomme A, Jenner M and Little B: Bristol, An Architectural History: Bristol: 1979-: 417).

Listing NGR: ST5718176259