Details
BRISTOL
ST5873SE CHRISTMAS STREET
901-1/11/55 (North West side)
08/01/59 Nos.17, 18 AND 19
St Bartholomew's Hospital
(Formerly Listed as:
CHRISTMAS STREET
Nos.17-19 (Consecutive)
incl. gateway of St Bartholomew's
Hospital and buildings at rear)
GV II*
C12 town house incorporated into monastery hospital founded
1240 by Sir John le Warre, Bristol Grammar School 1532-1767,
Queen Elizabeth Hospital School 1767-1847, incorporating three
C17 town houses, model workers flats of 1865, converted to
offices 1978. Late Norman-style columns and a Decorated
Gothic-style archway.
MATERIALS: limestone ashlar, rendered timber-frames, brick
lateral stacks and pantile roof.
PLAN: internally remodelled open-plan offices to sides of 2
courtyards.
EXTERIOR: street front of a row of C17 houses, each of 3
storeys and attic; 1-window range. The left-hand pair with
gables to the street, the right-hand house contains a central
C13 arched gateway with chamfered reveals to imposts and a
deeply-moulded arch, with timber arched braces above on
corbels to a jettied first floor with a C20 timber beam, and
pegged mullion windows with leaded metal casements.
The inside of the arch has attached columns with stiff leaf
capitals, moulded as the front; a flagged passage has a blind
left-hand arcade of 2 trefoil arches on columns with moulded
capitals and hoodmould, facing a fine carved figure of the
Madonna and Child with folded drapes, and at the far end of
the passage, an elliptical arch with 1 order, columns to
foliate capitals with grapes, set in the angle between 2
keel-moulded arches.
A passage leads through to a 2-centre arch, set within a
larger infilled 2-arch arcade on round Norman columns with
scallop capitals with square abaci; a free-standing battered
octagonal arch stands approx 3m in front of the left-hand
column, possibly part of the hospital chapel.
The left-hand gable has a jettied first floor with a slate
pent, a small second-floor jetty and a moulded strip to the
attic; a C19 shop front has an ovolo-moulded beam across the
central doorway and plate glass windows, beneath a good
2-storey canted oriel with close studding beneath central
Ipswich windows with faceted keys and small Ionic capitals
beneath and flanking cross windows, with leaded metal
casements, and a 4-light attic mullion window.
The stone left-hand corner is curved out beneath the jetty,
and the curve continues in the left return to an exterior
stack, with a left-hand small first-floor opening with stone
jambs and lintel, and a rear section with a Tudor-arched
doorway with C20 door and a left-hand 6/6-pane sash. Above is
a moulded 3-light mullion and transom window with 6 panes
above and 4 panes beneath the transom, beneath an overhanging
gable, against half of which the side of No.20 Christmas Steps
(qv) butts.
No.19 is a roughcast 2-window range with a C20 shop front
beneath jettied first floor, fascia boards to first floor and
eaves. Shop front has a stall riser, central doorway and
glazing bars to windows, early C18 9/9-pane sashes in flush
frames above. Rubble right-hand return. Facing the rear
courtyard is a 3 storey 5-window late C17 range with a cornice
and parapet, a central elliptical-arched doorway, cross
windows with metal leaded casements and label moulds, the
right-hand range separated by a pilaster strip, with a
right-hand open elliptical arch, 2-centred arched first-floor
window with Y tracery, and second-floor quatrefoil window.
The 1865 block is 3 storeys; 11-window range. Open stone
stairs with wrought-iron railings at the right-hand end to
full-width cantilevered stone access balconies, double doors
at the left-hand end, and on the ground floor separated by
pairs of windows. 6/6-pane sashes. The rear elevation has a
left-hand 7-window range of 6/6-pane sashes with timber
lintels, a dividing C20 stair block, and right-hand 5-window
section of alternate 3-window mullion and transom windows and
trefoil-headed openings.
INTERIOR: rear block ground floor with 5 chamfered heavy
timber beams trenched for top joists; the block facing into
the courtyard has heavy beams cut for joist joints in the
third floor.
HISTORICAL NOTE: the round piers predate the hospital, and may
come from an aisled hall, the earliest remains of domestic
architecture in the City, adapted to form the hospital chapel.
The 1865 block was developed as model housing for the poor,
one of the earliest such blocks of flats. The balconies
formerly extended round what was an enclosed courtyard.
(Loxton).
(The Buildings of England: Pevsner N: North Somerset and
Bristol: London: 1958-: 438; Mallory K: The Bristol House:
Bristol: 1985-: 50; Loxton S: Loxton's Bristol: Bristol:
1992-: 8).
Listing NGR: ST5866073191
