Architecture of Winchester College

St Catherine's Hill and part of Winchester College, looking southeast from the tower of Winchester Cathedral. Chapel and its tower are in the centre, with the buildings of Chamber Court and Outer Court below them; the Warden's Lodging is partly masked by trees on the left, while the Headmaster's House is on the right.

The architecture of Winchester College is a diverse set of architectural styles, reflecting the multiple periods of building from the college's foundation in 1382, through additions in the medieval and Early Modern periods, to a major expansion of accommodation in the Victorian era and then further extensions at the turn of the 20th century and more recently. The styles involved include those of Christopher Wren, Brunelleschi, Queen Anne revival, and High Victorian Baronial. Among the architects whose work is represented in the ensemble are William Butterfield, G. S. Repton, G. E. Street, William White, Basil Champneys, E. S. Prior, Herbert Baker, and Henry Hill.

Winchester College has numerous listed buildings from these periods, including the 1924 War Cloister.

Architecture by period

Winchester College, founded in 1382, consists physically of an assemblage of buildings from medieval times to the present day. Several are listed buildings; There are 18 Grade I, 6 Grade II* and over 70 Grade II listings for its buildings, including many of the houses on both sides of Kingsgate Street, and some further south on Kingsgate Road.

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  Sketch map of Winchester College, showing the major buildings and its position relative to the city and cathedral. All locations and building outlines are diagrammatic.

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  Plan of Winchester College's medieval and Early Modern buildings

The medieval foundation

The medieval buildings, representing most of the original foundation from the school's opening in 1394, include Outer Gate and Outer Court, Chamber Court, the Chapel, and the Cloisters. Most are built in flint with limestone facings and slate roofs. The Cloisters have Italianate wagon roofs and bare external walls; the inside walls have gothic arched openings, each divided into three lights.

The south side of Chamber Court is formed by the chapel of St. Mary, known simply as "Chapel". It retains its original wooden fan-vaulted ceiling, designed by Hugh Herland, carpenter to Richard II. The college's dining hall, known as "Hall", is housed in the same range of buildings in ashlar stonework, on the first floor to the west of Chapel. Hall has wooden panelling, installed in 1540. The four-stage tower, visible from all around the college, was demolished and rebuilt in 1862–1863.

The chapel is known for its stained glass. The East window depicts the Tree of Jesse. Down the chapel's north and south sides is a collection of saints. Little of the original medieval glass, designed by Thomas Glazier, survives. A firm of glaziers in Shrewsbury, Betton and Evans, was tasked with cleaning the glass in the 1820s. At that time there was no known process for cleaning the badly deteriorated glass and so it was copied, while most of the original glass was scattered or destroyed. Some pieces have been recovered. The art historian and Old Wykehamist, Kenneth Clark, bought back the Tree of Jesse section of the east window, now housed in Thurburn's Chantry, at the back of the chapel. Further figures have been returned; they form the east window of Fromond's Chantry, inside the Cloisters.

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  Outer Gate, College Street, 1394

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  Chamber Court, 1394, looking through Middle Gate to Outer Court and Outer Gate

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  The Cloisters, 1394

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  Cloisters, with Fromond's Chantry on left, Chapel in background

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  Hall and Chapel, south side, cloisters on right

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  Chapel's east window with Victorian stained glass

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  Chapel ceiling

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  North side of Chapel, facing Chamber Court

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  Medieval glass from Chapel in Thurburn's Chantry

Medieval to Early Modern

Later buildings include Fromond's Chantry, built inside the Cloisters after 1420, and "School", constructed in 1683–1687 in Wren style, with a 1692 statue of the college's founder William of Wykeham above the door by C. G. Cibber. The College Sick House, known as Bethesda, was built by the school's warden John Harris in 1656–1657. It is constructed mainly of brick with mullioned windows; the front has two large gables, flanking a smaller central gable that projects forward, housing the door.

The Warden's Lodgings is constructed largely of red brick; the face North on to College Street has its lower part in flint with stone buttresses, the upper part with lightly-arched windows dated to 1730, while the East face. on to the Warden's gardens and the River Itchen, dates to Warden Nicholas's reworking of the building in 1692.

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  Lierne vault in Fromond's Chantry, 15th century

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  View from College Street: Fromond's Chantry (inside Cloisters) on left, then Chapel, then buildings of Chamber Court, then (in red brick) the Warden's Lodgings.

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  The building called "School" in Wren style, 1683–1687

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  The 'Meads' walled cricket pitch

Victorian

The school was greatly extended in the 19th century with the addition of boarding houses for "commoners", paying pupils, as opposed to the scholars who continued to live in the medieval College. The first two were Chernocke House and Moberly's, which began as private houses owned by teachers. The third, Du Boulay's, was built speculatively by the Reverend James Du Boulay, borrowing money against the hope of future paying boarders. In 1869, six more boarding houses were added, four of them built speculatively under the headmaster George Ridding. The original and surviving sports field was the walled area of Meads, just behind School; other fields were added in the 19th century on both sides of the River Itchen. The "forbidding" neo-Gothic Headmaster's House (no longer used for that purpose), its front in knapped and squared flint, was built by G. S. Repton in 1839–1842.

Just to the south of the Headmaster's House are Flint Court and Moberly Court, designed by William Butterfield (the architect of Keble College, Oxford) and built between 1867 and 1870. Flint Court is open at the front; the wings to left and right are of 3 storeys, in red brick, described by Pevsner as "partly chequer, partly diaper"; the centre has a single-storey Perpendicular-style cloister in front of the full-height range.

In the 1880s, a large Sanatorium, designed by William White, was built in High Victorian Baronial style in 1884–1893; it has been described as "an all too prominent feature" of the school's landscape. It is now used as the college's art school.

For the school's 500th anniversary, the handsome but impractical Brunelleschi-style building called "Museum" (formally named "Memorial Buildings") by Basil Champneys, intended to support all the arts and sciences, was opened in 1897. Nikolaus Pevsner described it as "curiously Baroque", in brick and Bath stone, arranged in nine bays with columns; the windows are flanked by prominent stone blocks projecting from and alternating with brickwork. The first and last bays are solid, with statues of William of Wykeham and of Queen Victoria. The building has a loggia with two rows of Tuscan-style columns, forming part of the ground floor.

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  Headmaster's House by G. S. Repton, 1839–1842

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  Sergeant's House by G. E. Street, one of the 1869 boarding houses

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  The old Sanatorium building in High Victorian Baronial by William White, 1884–1893

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  Inside the loggia of the 1897 "Museum" by Basil Champneys, with a cast of Donatello's Cantoria for Florence Cathedral

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  River Itchen, playing fields (Science School in the background)

Modern

Further information: Winchester College War Cloister

The flint and greenstone Music School, designed by E. S. Prior, was added in 1903–1904. The building is octagonal, with large round-topped gables fronting a pyramidal roof. It was extended in the 21st century with a mixture of yellow brick, limestone dressings, glass, and zinc cladding.

The Science School was designed by Henry L. G. Hill in what the college calls Queen Anne revival style, and completed in 1904; it remains in use for its original purpose. The building is in red brick, dressed with white Portland stone. Pevsner describes the style as "richly decorated ... Wrenaissance". The hipped roofs are covered with slate, above a cornice with modillion eaves. An extension was designed by T. D. Atkinson around 1930.

To the west of Meads, the college's War Cloister serves as a memorial to the Wykehamist dead of the two World Wars. It was designed by Herbert Baker and dedicated in 1924. It is a listed building. A bronze bust of Old Boy Air Chief Marshal Lord Dowding sits on the west side of the cloister. The College's South Africa Gate on Kingsgate Street commemorates the Wykehamist dead of the 1899–1902 Boer War. It leads to the War Cloister. Another older war memorial in the school is the entry chamber to Chapel, known as "Crimea" after the Crimean War of 1853–56, and bearing the names of Wykehamists who died at the siege of Sebastopol.

A hall big enough for the enlarged school, New Hall, was opened in 1961, just east of the Mill Leat, a branch of the River Itchen. Its design was constrained by the need to accommodate the magnificent oak panelling which had been taken out of Chapel in that building's "disastrous" internal redesign of 1874. The interior of New Hall with Warden Nicholas's 1680–1683 panelling has been called "a triumph".

The development of a "Southern Campus" comprising a PE centre, swimming pool, rifle range, and squash courts by the architects Design Engine began in 2017 on the site between the Kingsgate Park sports field and the Norman Road tennis courts. The "complex geometry of the roof forms" is intended to reference the silhouette of the college's historic buildings, while the sports centre's grey brick and the other buildings' red brick is meant to reflect the tones of the medieval flint and brick. The "substantial" buildings are designed to be "largely hidden" from outside the college.

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  Science School by Henry L. G. Hill, 1904

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  Music School by E. S. Prior, 1903–1904

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  War Cloister by Herbert Baker, 1924

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  View from New Hall (brick with stone facings) 1961, to Chapel

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  Music School's 21st century extension, with St Michael's Church

Sources

• Sabben-Clare, James (1981). Winchester College. Paul Cave Publications. ISBN 978-0-86146-023-6.