Bakers' Hall

Bakers' Hall is a historic building in Bristol that originally served as a monastery infirmary and bakers' guild hall. It dates back to around 1230 as part of the Dominican friary, with the guild hall being added around 1540. The building was converted into a house in the 18th century and underwent restoration in the 19th and 20th centuries. It features pennant rubble construction with limestone dressings and a sprocketed pantile roof, and it has a first-floor hall plan across two storeys.

The south elevation has been much rebuilt and includes a three-window first-floor range. There is a central 20th-century external stack, flanked on the right by two mid-19th century two-light plate-tracery windows, and above them are four 20th-century windows with plain stone architraves. To the left of the stack is an 18th-century segmental brick arch over a similar mid-19th century plate-tracery window, along with a springer for 13th-century arched windows. The ground floor features, from left to right, a blocked 13th-century pointed-arched doorway, jambs for a 17th-century window, a blocked 17th-century two-light stone-mullioned window, and half of a 15th-century Perpendicular window that was reset in 1961, taken from the nave of the former friary church.

The west gable end has a 17th-century doorway with a chamfered arch and a 19th-century six-over-six pane sash window set under a concrete lintel. The north elevation displays two mid-20th century pointed-arched openings beneath 17th-century relieving arches, with springers for a blocked 13th-century arch on the left and a similar arch above a blocked first-floor window.

Inside, the building features a 14th-century five-and-a-half bay arch-braced collar beam crown-post roof, which is possibly the oldest roof in Bristol. It includes lateral bracing to the crown post principals, lower pointed-arched wind braces, chamfered through-purlins, and a wall plate set on 20th-century corbels. The common rafters and collars are mostly from the 20th century, and there is a chimney breast from the inserted 18th-century house at the west end. The ground-floor passage likely served as the south walk of the 'lower cloister', with the east walk now covered by the New Hall. After the Reformation, the building was purchased by the Bakers' Guild.