St Annes Chapel And Old Grammar School Museum Including Walls And Gates And Piers

St Anne's Chapel and Old Grammar School Museum, Paternoster Row, Barnstaple

This Grade I listed building is a chantry chapel, later converted to a grammar school and now functioning as a museum. The structure is probably from the early 14th century, with an early to mid-16th century tower. It was restored in 1869. The enclosing walls and gates date from the mid to late 19th century.

The building is constructed of stone rubble, with roughly coursed stone in the tower and dressed stone surrounds to windows and doorways. The roof is slated with 19th-century crested red ridge-tiles. A stone rubble chimney sits on the north wall with a square top of dressed stone; the sides, now panelled in red brick, were probably open originally.

The plan comprises a single large upper room with an undercroft. A square tower at the west end of the south side contains the entrance porch and staircase.

Exterior

The main building is two storeys tall; the tower rises to three storeys. The ground storey has three single-light shouldered-head windows in the north wall, two in the south wall, and two windows of two lights each in the east wall—all have been remade in the 19th century with relieving arches above. The west wall contains a narrow doorway with chamfered pointed head and drip-mould of worn orange-coloured stone. The jambs have been rebuilt in local stone with a relieving arch above.

The upper storey has 2-light pointed-arched windows with hoodmoulds of worn orange-coloured stone in the north, south, and west walls. The lights are trefoil-headed with a round cinquefoil light in the head. The east wall has a similar 3-light window, partly restored, where the round light contains three trefoil panels.

The tower features a worn segmental-headed doorway (possibly of Beer stone) in its second storey on the west face, hollow-moulded and carved with large flowers in high relief. This is approached from Paternoster Row by 19th-century granite steps with flanking stone rubble walls having chamfered dressed stone copings. Above the doorway is a worn single-light window of the same stone with a cinquefoil arch under a square head with hoodmould.

The south wall of the tower has second and third-storey windows in similar style, both probably restored. The second storey has three lights with carved heads terminating the hoodmould; the third storey has two mullioned and transomed lights, also with carved heads. The ground storey bears a stone plaque commemorating the death of Thomas Lee junior, architect of the Guildhall in High Street, who drowned while bathing at Morthoe on 5 September 1884. The east wall has a small square stair window with restored hollow-moulded surround. Four worn gargoyles, probably reused, are fixed to the corners and sides of the tower. The tower has a crenellated parapet.

Attached to the east side of the tower is a single-storeyed projection, possibly a 19th-century boiler room. The main range has a mid-19th-century bell turret (without bell) at the west end and a cross, probably of similar date, at the east end. Both gables have kneelers but no coping-stones.

Interior

The entrance doorway to the chapel and upper schoolroom has a chamfered pointed-arched stone surround with pyramid stops and hoodmould, with a 19th-century plank door bearing ornate iron hinges of uncertain date. The upper room contains a 14th-century stone piscina with cinquefoil ogee arch, the surround featuring quarter-round moulding and pyramidal stop. The roof is plain waggon, unceiled. A 19th-century dado of chamfered planks lines the walls. A fireplace with plain stone surround is present, along with three patterned iron ventilators in the floor. Nineteenth-century desks have bases of reused 17th-century balusters.

Under the west window stands a black marble pedestal inscribed "IOH: GAY POETA AMABILIS NATUS BARNSTAPOLIAE AD 1685 IN HAC SCHOLA EDUCATUS. OBIIT LONDONI AD 1732." The bust of Gay, shown in a late 19th-century photograph, is now missing.

The ground storey features an axial ceiling beam on long chamfered pads supported by arch-braces and chamfered posts, the latter having restored step-stops at their base and convex stops at the top. On display is a 17th-century carved wood door and door-frame from a house in Castle Street. A stone staircase with stone parapet wall at the top has 17th-century panelling and door at the bottom, with a borrowed light having a chamfered stone frame.

Subsidiary Features

The ground surrounding the chapel, formerly part of the churchyard, is enclosed on the south and west sides by a stone rubble wall with chamfered granite coping. Opposite the steps to the chapel, the wall is built up into a pair of gate piers with chamfered corners and caps. Cast-iron gates with fleurs-de-lys and quatrefoil decoration are fitted between these piers. On the corner of Church Lane stands a similar gate without piers. The walls originally carried railings.