Bishop Burnell's Great Hall is a Grade I listed building in the Somerset local planning authority area, England. First listed on 12 November 1953. A Medieval Medieval hall.
Bishop Burnell's Great Hall
- WRENN ID
- gentle-wicket-heron
- Grade
- I
- Local Planning Authority
- Somerset
- Constituency
- Wells and Mendip Hills MP: Tessa Munt (LD)
- Country
- England
- Date first listed
- 12 November 1953
- Type
- Medieval hall
- Period
- Medieval
- Address
- Bishop Burnell's Great Hall, Bishop's Palace, Wells
- OS grid reference
- ST 551 456
- Coordinates
- 51.20868, -2.64308
- Source
- Historic England listing
Description
Bishop Burnell's Great Hall is the ruins of a former medieval bishop's hall house, dating from around 1280, with part of it demolished around 1830. It is constructed from local rubble with Doulting stone dressings and currently has no roof. The remains include a large five-bay aisled hall, approximately 35 meters long and 18 meters wide internally, featuring a screens passage and a north porch, with a solar and undercroft to the west. The surviving structures include the north wall, west wall, remnants of the arcade column bases, and a detached turret at the southeast corner of the east wall.
The north wall has four tall two-light geometrical Decorated windows, each with a sexfoil head over cusped lights and a cusped transom. To the right is the inner doorway to the former north porch, with octagonal stair turret remains at either end. At the west end, there are two octagonal turrets, and later single-storey 19th-century service buildings have been added, forming a narrow central courtyard. There was already some low-level extension in this area by 1730.
On the south side, a low wall extends towards the east, featuring a pointed doorway with mouldings. Originally, this hall was an impressive large residence. It is believed to have been built after the Chapel began construction and appears in Buck's view from 1730, still largely intact, with a deep two-storey north porch, three windows (with the eastern window seemingly blocked by a solid wall), and four roof gables or dormers. The south and east walls were finally demolished in the early 19th century by Bishop Law to create a more picturesque ruin. As noted by Pevsner, this site reflects the gentle romanticism of the 18th and early 19th centuries.
Local climate
Bishop Burnell's Great Hall receives an average of 860 mm of rain a year. This makes it wetter than 62% of listed buildings in the UK. Its exposure to wind-driven rain is greater than that of 70% of listed buildings.
It experiences an average of 34 freeze-thaw cycles a year, fewer than 52% of listed buildings. Of these, 14 follow at least 1 mm of rain in the preceding 48 hours. Average temperatures at this location have risen by 0.3°C per decade since 1991.
Averages for 1991–2020; temperature trend 1991–2025. Figures describe the wider area (a grid cell of roughly 10 km), not the individual site. Contains modified Copernicus Climate Change Service information 2026.
More on this building
Sign in or create a free account to unlock:
- No EPC on record for this property
- No sale records on file
- No related consent applications matched
- Detailed attributes — period, style, materials, features
- Flood risk assessment
- Radon risk assessment
- Weather exposure and heating demand — rain and frost month by month and year by year, wind direction, solar and humidity
Matched applications, energy data and sale records are assembled automatically and may contain errors. Flag incorrect data.
Similar buildings
The closest matches to this building from all 493,000 UK listed buildings, by architecture, period and materials.
this building 1 similar nearby listed buildings