Westgate Galleria

Westgate Galleria

Almshouse, now shopping and craft centre. Built 1787-90 by William Price of Gloucester for the City of Gloucester, on the site of St Bartholomew's Hospital, which was founded in the early 12th century. Minor late 19th-century additions were made in similar style. The building was converted to commercial use around 1980, when chimney-stacks and the belfry were demolished.

The structure is built in brick, faced in ashlar on the front and with stone dressings elsewhere, beneath gabled slate roofs. It is designed in the Gothick style.

The building follows a symmetrical cross plan with a central axial range and long flanking wings. The axial range contains the former chapel at the rear, which has a semicircular apsidal end. The wings formerly housed accommodation for almshouse inmates and now contain shops and offices, with a small toilet block added at each end in the late 19th century.

The exterior displays two storeys with a full-height former chapel. The front elevation is symmetrical, featuring shallow full-height blind arcading with triple-clustered shafts and moulded pointed arches on the front and sides of the central gabled axial range and the flanking side of each wing. Rising from the central shafts through the crowning string course and crenellated parapet are thin canted buttresses, probably intended to support finials. Thin diagonal buttresses mark each corner of the axial range and wings.

The front of the axial block displays three bays of arcading rising in steps into the gable. The wider central bay projects as a porch with crenellated parapet and arched doorway; each side wall of the porch contains a blind pointed arch. On the first floor of the central bay is a pointed-arched window flanked by blind arches; the side bays on each floor have similar, smaller windows. On each side of the axial range is a wide arcade bay with a four-centred arch. On each floor, both the side bay and the ends of both side walls adjacent to the wings contain four-centred arched windows.

Each wing has six arcade bays with four-centred arches; each bay and the ends of both walls adjacent to the axial range on each floor contain four-centred arched windows. All window arches have splayed jambs, hoodmoulds and casements.

At the rear, a brick dentil cornice runs along the wall. The apsidal end of the former chapel in the axial range is lit by two large Tudor-arched windows. Each wing comprises six bays; a doorway is located in the bay adjacent to the axial range, with sashes on both floors.

The interior formerly contained an entrance corridor, now blocked, which led to a central lobby with an imperial staircase to the first floor. Double flights to each side have stone steps and cast-iron balustrades of S-profile with one baluster per tread. The staircase is supported by a pair of cast-iron columns and shallow arches with pierced quatrefoils in the spandrels. From the central lobby, axial corridors on both floors pass through both wings, flanked by shops and offices converted from the former almshouse rooms, and lead to the small toilet blocks at each end. The ground-floor corridors have exposed brick walls and quadripartite vaults. The former entrance corridor and central lobby retain mosaic floors, while the first-floor corridors are paved in stone.