St Bartholomew'S Hospital

A complex of buildings spanning from the 12th century to the 19th century, with the earliest surviving structure being a 12th-century town house that was incorporated into a monastery hospital founded in 1240 by Sir John le Warre. The site subsequently served as Bristol Grammar School from 1532 to 1767, then as Queen Elizabeth Hospital School from 1767 to 1847. The listed buildings comprise three 17th-century town houses, a block of model workers' flats built in 1865, and later converted to offices in 1978.

The principal buildings face Christmas Street as a row of three-storey houses with attics, each a single-window range. The left-hand pair features gables to the street. The right-hand house contains a central 13th-century arched gateway with chamfered reveals to its imposts and a deeply-moulded arch, with timber arched braces above mounted on corbels supporting a jettied first floor topped with a 20th-century timber beam. The gateway includes pegged mullion windows with leaded metal casements.

Within the archway passage, attached columns with stiff-leaf capitals are moulded to match the front arch. A blind left-hand arcade of two trefoil arches on columns with moulded capitals and hoodmould faces a finely carved figure of the Madonna and Child with folded drapes. At the passage's far end stands an elliptical arch with one order of columns to foliate capitals decorated with grapes, set within the angle between two keel-moulded arches. A further passage leads to a two-centre arch within a larger infilled two-arch arcade resting on round Norman columns with scallop capitals and square abaci. A free-standing battered octagonal arch stands approximately three metres in front of the left-hand column, possibly part of the original hospital chapel.

The left-hand gable displays a jettied first floor with slate pent, a small second-floor jetty and moulded strip to the attic. A 19th-century shop front features an ovolo-moulded beam across the central doorway and plate-glass windows, beneath a fine two-storey canted oriel with close studding. The oriel contains central Ipswich windows with faceted keys and small Ionic capitals beneath, flanked by cross windows with leaded metal casements, and a four-light attic mullion window. The stone left-hand corner curves out beneath the jetty, continuing as a curve to an exterior stack. A small first-floor opening with stone jambs and lintel sits to the left, while a rear section contains a Tudor-arched doorway with 20th-century door and a six-pane by six-pane sash to its left. Above is a moulded three-light mullion-and-transom window with six panes above and four below the transom, sheltered beneath an overhanging gable.

No. 19 is a roughcast two-window range with a 20th-century shop front beneath a jettied first floor, fascia boards at first-floor and eaves level. The shop front comprises a stall riser, central doorway and glazed windows, with early 18th-century nine-pane by nine-pane sashes in flush frames above. A rubble right-hand return faces the rear courtyard.

Facing the rear courtyard is a three-storey, five-window late 17th-century range with cornice and parapet. A central elliptical-arched doorway sits beneath cross windows with metal leaded casements and label moulds. The right-hand range, separated by a pilaster strip, includes a right-hand open elliptical arch, a two-centred arched first-floor window with Y tracery, and a second-floor quatrefoil window.

The 1865 workers' flats block rises to three storeys across an eleven-window range. Open stone stairs with wrought-iron railings at the right-hand end lead to full-width cantilevered stone access balconies. Double doors sit at the left-hand end, separated from pairs of windows at ground level. All windows are six-pane by six-pane sashes. The rear elevation comprises a left-hand seven-window range of six-pane by six-pane sashes with timber lintels, a dividing 20th-century stair block, and a right-hand five-window section alternating between three-light mullion-and-transom windows and trefoil-headed openings.

Internally, the rear block's ground floor contains five chamfered heavy timber beams trenched for top joists. The block facing into the courtyard exhibits heavy beams cut for joist joints on the third floor.

Construction materials include limestone ashlar, rendered timber-frames, brick lateral stacks, and pantile roof. The plan comprises internally remodelled open-plan offices arranged around two courtyards.

Historical sources indicate that the round piers predate the hospital and may derive from an aisled hall, representing the earliest surviving remains of domestic architecture in the city, subsequently adapted to form the hospital chapel. The 1865 block was developed as pioneering model housing for the poor, among the earliest such apartment blocks. The balconies formerly extended around an enclosed courtyard that no longer exists.