The Music School And Attached Walls

THE MUSIC SCHOOL AND ATTACHED WALLS

WELLS, CATHEDRAL GREEN

A former house of the Archdeacon of Wells, now used as a music school. The building was largely rebuilt by Archdeacon Holes around 1450–70, though it may retain some 13th-century work. It underwent extensive restoration in 1886 by Edmund Buckle. The structure is built of local stone, roughly squared and coursed, with ashlar chimney stacks and a slate roof.

The plan comprises a large full-height hall with a cross passage to the left, rooms on two floors and an attic to the left, and a staircase turret at the front left.

The front elevation displays six bays. A plinth runs below a parapet string, topped by a battlemented parapet with corner turrets capped by conical roofs and crocketed finials. The windows feature Perpendicular tracery with cinquefoil cusping. Bay 1 contains three-light windows at two levels, with a segmental relieving arch over the lower window and a transom and flat label mould to the upper. Bay 2 is an octagonal projection with hipped roof and small lower windows. Bay 3 is a projecting porch extending nearly as far as bay 2, containing a large elliptical 19th-century arch framing a two-light window and a pointed arched doorway, with an ornamented battlemented parapet above. Above this is a three-light transomd window with flat label, and in the roof a 19th-century dormer with pitched roof. Bay 4 features a projecting solar window with chamfered corners extending less than full height, with pairs of two-light transomd windows with arched heads on the south face and single two-light windows to the south-west, south-east and east faces beneath a battlemented parapet. Bays 5 and 6 have later two-light windows with transoms and different tracery patterns, with relieving arches and no labels. In the south-east corner are the jamb and part of the arch of an earlier door.

The west gable displays three four-centred blocked arches at low level and an offset at eaves level. In the gable is a circular window divided into five parts by 19th-century tracery, with a trefoil cusped window above.

The north elevation has been modified by a lean-to house at the rear, but retains a two-light arched traceried window to the east bay and deeper transomd windows in the next two bays.

The interior of the main entrance cross-passage contains two transverse beams with chamfers to run-out stops. To the right lies the hall, accessed through a pair of fielded-panel doors. It has an eight-bay arch-braced collar roof with chamfered purlins and four ranges of broad chamfered wind-braces in X-form to a diagonal ridge. The roof has flat rafters, boarded on a brattished plate over open cusped lights and a further brattished lower member, with a deep carved inscribed frieze. Near the east end on the north side is a cusped recess apparently of 13th-century date. At the east end is a plain wall with oculus and a gallery on scrolled brackets, returned to the north side, with a series of thin turned balusters to arches in groups of five and a deep handrail. At the west end is a gallery with a free-standing spiral stair and similar balustrade. At ground-floor level is a 19th-century stone fireplace with frieze and mantelshelf on octagonal pilasters. The frieze inscription reads: 'Omnis Scriba doctus in regno coelorum similis est homini patrifamilias qui profert de thesauro suo nova et veta .... Sacerdotis custodient licentiam et legem requirent ex die eius quia angelus Domini exercitum est MDCCCXL'. This likely replaces 'monkish verses' said to have been present in 1680. The rooms beyond the cross-passage are chiefly late 19th-century in detail, though the attic storey retains heavy principals and purlins of earlier date.

Attached to the south-west corner is a short length of tall wall with coping and a gateway to the west, having plain square ashlar piers with simple plinth and pyramid caps, with 20th-century timber gates. Enclosing the front area with a quadrant curve to the south-west corner is a wall approximately one metre high with pitched roll-top ashlar coping and a gap opposite the porch. This continues to a matching gateway at the east end against the Vicars' Hall, with a tall return running northwards back to the south-east corner of the building, which enhances the setting and the street scene of the Cathedral Green.

Historically, the building remained a house when Polydore Vergil, author of the Historia Anglia, was forced to surrender it to the Crown in 1555. In the late 18th century it became a brewery, but following the 1886 restoration served for 90 years as the Library of the now defunct Wells Theological College. It came to the Cathedral School in 1955.