The Bishop'S Chapel And The Bishop'S Palace

WELLS

ST5445 BISHOP'S PALACE 662-1/7/5 The Bishop's Chapel, The Bishop's 12/11/53 Palace (Formerly Listed as: BISHOP'S PALACE The Bishop's Palace (including...Chapel...))

GV I

Private chapel in Bishop's Palace. 1275-92 built for Bishop Burnell. Local stone rubble roughly coursed, Doulting stone dressings, shallow pitched roof behind parapet. EXTERIOR: single storey, 3 bays, set at right angles to, and on the south west corner of, the Bishop's Palace (qv). Plinth, offsets under main windows, parapet string and crenellated parapet, corner turrets, those on north side square, but the south-west corner octagonal on plan. Wide west elevation has semicircular arched doorway with trefoil inner arch, with Purbeck stone colonettes over a pair of C19 plank doors with decorative iron straps. Above is a segmental pointed-arched window with arched label and 5 cusped lights, in the gable a sexfoil vent. Stair light in corner turrets, arched doorway in south-west corner. Arched openings in parapet. East elevation has a large pointed segmental-headed window with six lights in groups of 3 with interlaced tracery, and a central octofoil, all under a moulded drip with stops. Each side has 3 windows with geometric Decorated tracery. INTERIOR: a single undivided space with lierne vault, having naturalistic foliage to bosses, on triple shafts to C19 carved corbel heads, and with paired shafts to window reveals. Stone floor. The rere-arch to the W door is cusped. Reredos in 5 bays with blank 2-light openings with quatrefoils, below the main sill. Sedilia and piscina, restored by Buckler, 1834, with Purbeck shafts and cusped arches. Windows with mainly C19 grisaille, but some medieval glass fragments to tracery lights. Fittings are C20: the W returns to the stalls have a coved cresting carried on slender paired colonnettes. This chapel is an important element in the development of the Decorated Style in the late C13. (Buildings of England: Pevsner N: North Somerset and Bristol: London: 1958-: 314; Colchester LS: Wells Cathedral: A History: Shepton Mallet: 1982-: 227-244; Bony J: The English Decorated Style: London: 1979-: PASSIM).

Listing NGR: ST5520745735