Details
BRISTOL
ST5776 COTE LANE, Stoke Bishop
901-1/28/2129 (South side)
24/02/93 St Monica's Home of Rest
GV II
Almshouses. 1920-25. By Sir G Oatley, for HH Wills and Monica
Wills. Squared, coursed Pennant rubble with limestone
dressings, half-timbered gables and dormers, diagonally-set
ashlar cross-axial and exterior stacks and tiled gabled and
hipped roof with overhanging eaves. Cotswold Elizabethan
Revival style.
Axial plan of 2 linked triangular ranges around courtyards,
with projecting NE wing, and a NW entrance block. 2 storeys
and attic; 11:4:12:13:12:4:11-window range front elevation.
The symmetrical principal elevation facing SW has central
section with full-height canted outer and square central bays
with crenellated parapets, separated by 3-window sections with
fluted Ionic pilasters, first-floor semicircular-arched
windows with balconies, and balustrade with heraldic animals,
with a cornice carved with beasts' heads. Flanking wings have
2 projecting gables, with a further pair to their front ends
with 2-storey canted bays, the attics close-studded with
carved barge-boards, and jettied with arched brackets to the
ends. The extreme ends terminate in crenellated canted bays as
the middle section. Chamfered 1-, 2- and 3-light mullion and
transom windows with metal leaded casements.
The main entrance has flanking full-height canted bays, tall
crenellated parapet with a heraldic panel, and a projecting
open porch of 3 semicircular arches with attached Doric
columns and an openwork parapet with the patron's initials,
and contemporary revolving doors.
INTERIOR: axial passage along the rear elevation
semicircular-arched tunnel vault, rear open-well stairs in
hipped-roofed towers, plain Tudor-arched stone fire surrounds,
and a projecting rear theatre with a gallery, segmental-arched
roof, deep side cornice on moulded brackets, wainscotting and
enriched decorative plasterwork.
HISTORICAL NOTE: named after Monica Wills, wife of HH Wills,
and built at the same time as Wills Hall (qv) as the latest
and largest of the City's almshouse foundations. Details of a
design prepared between 1914-18 for a different site were
included when the current preferred one became available in
1918.
Of considerable landscape value at the northern end of the
Downs, with extensive gardens enclosed by a ha-ha; very large,
well detailed, but with rather mechanical variation of
repeated forms, and the chapel and theatre apart a rather
plain interior. Late C19 Domestic Revival and Perpendicular
Revival style, using accurate historical details rather than
abstracted forms as is more common in late Gothic Revival of
the C20, but exceptionally well detailed and forming part of a
visually impressive design. St Monica's Chapel and St Monica's
Court described separately.
(Gomme A, Jenner M and Little B: Bristol, An Architectural
History: Bristol: 1979-: 417).
Listing NGR: ST5718176259
