Theological College

The Theological College, built in 1594, is a Grade I listed building located in The Close. This late 17th-century structure is two stories tall with an attic and features a symmetrical front flanked by slightly projecting wings. The exterior is constructed of brick on a stone-capped projecting plinth, with chamfered stone quoins and a moulded stone string at the first-floor level. It has a hipped old tile roof, with each wing containing one dormer and two windows. The central section boasts three dormers, five windows on the first floor, four windows on the ground floor, and a central six-panel door (with the top panel glazed) set within an eaved architrave surround. The doorcase is adorned with panelled pilasters capped with carved scroll brackets, and the moulded string is broken over the brackets, featuring a bolection mould between the architrave and string. Above, a plain frieze and richly carved brackets with an acanthus pattern support a flat moulded hood enriched with an egg-and-tongue bed mould.

Inside, there is a panelled entrance hall and a good staircase with a plain closed string and twisted balusters. To the east, there is a flint rubble chapel with stone dressings designed by Butterfield in 1881, which features an incongruous octagonal turret with a stone upper part and a short spire, along with single and two-light cusped windows and a projecting gabled bay that extends through the eaves. To the rear on the east side, there is an L-shaped residential block of similar style and date, likely also by Butterfield. This block is made of flint rubble with brick bands, has an attic floor rendered with applied studding, and features a gable end tiled roof with gabled dormers. The walls have irregularly spaced thin stone buttresses, and there are narrow single and paired sash windows. The east end of the north wing has a hipped roof with a finial, and there are three-storey canted hipped roof superimposed bay windows facing south. All the listed buildings in The Close form an outstanding group.