A tale of two Deaneries: The unique medieval and 17th century homes attached to Gloucester Cathedral
The Deans of Gloucester have consecutively occupied two houses in the cathedral close — namely, The Old and the New Deanery. Both have a fascinating history, as John Goodall discovers.
In different corners of the cathedral close at Gloucester are two very different buildings linked by a common thread of occupation. One, in the shadow of the cathedral, is an outstanding medieval residence on the grand scale with a history stretching back to the 12th century. The other is a handsome Georgian house of about 1740, brick built with a regular grid of windows and a pedimented central doorcase. They have served consecutively as the official home of the Dean of Gloucester and, in combination, illustrate the story of the cathedral close and its architectural evolution over the past 900 years.
By royal charter dated September 3, 1541, Henry VIII made Gloucester a city and reconstituted its ancient abbey of St Peter — suppressed in January the previous year — as a cathedral. Henceforth, the church of the Bishop of Gloucester would be served not by monks, but a ruling dean and a community of six senior clergy termed canons, six minor canons and a choir of six lay clerks, one master of choristers and eight choristers. There were to be two masters of grammar, to instruct the choir boys, as well as a professional staff of two under sacrists, two doorkeepers, who would also act as ‘virgers’, a butler, a cook, and an under cook.
This transformation from Benedictine abbey to cathedral college marked a decisive moment of change at Gloucester and the accompanying rededication of the church — from St Peter to the Holy Trinity — underlined Henry VIII’s rejection of Papal authority. It was accompanied, however, by some important continuities. Not only were some former monks granted places in the new community, but the monastic buildings passed intact to the new foundation. These included the church, one of the formative masterpieces of English late-medieval architecture — and world-famous thanks to its starring role in several Harry Potter films — as well as the wider monastic precinct.
Look familiar? Gloucester Cathedral's cloisters, with their celebrated fan-vaulted ceiling, were used in the filming of Harry Potter.
The Rule of St Benedict observed by the monks of St Peter’s describes a communal religious life. It was to accommodate this that in the 11th century, Serlo, first Norman abbot of Gloucester, created the architectural bones of the late-medieval monastery. He laid the foundation stone for a monumental new church on June 29, 1089, the architectural centrepiece of a new monastic complex. This was organised, as was conventional, around a cloister with a refectory, dormitory and chapter house respectively for the monks to eat, sleep and meet in common.
As part of this project, Serlo, or one of his immediate successors, also began a residence for the abbot adjacent to the west front of the church nave. This took the form of a three-storey tower. Set in the space between the tower and the nave was a porch, the main entrance to the cloister, with the abbot’s chapel above it. The abbot’s tower overlooked the outer court of the monastic precinct. This, the Great Court, was connected by a gatehouse to the quays on the River Severn, long the source of Gloucester’s prosperity. Filled with service and subsidiary buildings, including the abbey mill, it was the working area of the monastery and the main entrance to it.
Abbots in great medieval monasteries such as Gloucester often occupied independent residences. Not only, as powerful magnates, did they maintain large households, but they had to engage in business that could distract from the monastic round of prayer. During the later Middle Ages, however, other senior monks within the community also left the dormitory and began to live with a degree of independence. This move was partly a product of rising expectations of domestic comfort and privacy in society at large; standards of living among the wealthy and educated, be they lay or clerical, broadly matching one another.
In addition, however, the change was encouraged by the way in which monasteries were being administered. From the 13th century, it became common to assign estates from within the landed endowment of the monastery to the officers appointed by the abbot. The intention was that these so-called obedientiaries — such as the cellarer, responsible for provisions, or the sacristan, charged with the management of the liturgy — would use the estate revenue to discharge their duties. In the process, they came to enjoy independent incomes and might take up residence in the service buildings for which they had responsibility. The very richest might build country houses on the estates they managed.
Fig 2: A portrait of Archbishop Laud, previously Dean of Gloucester, commands this medieval room with its 17th-century panelling.
At Gloucester, in about 1330, the abbot built a new courtyard residence in the northern corner of the Great Court. His deputy, the prior, then moved into the abbot’s former lodging. By this date, the original tower had been elaborately re-fronted in the 13th century (Fig 1) and linked to two additional ranges by means of a stair turret. These two ranges stand at right angles to one another and have been much adapted over time.
The larger of the two has been known since at least the mid 17th century as the Parliament Chamber and was possibly the hall used for a meeting of parliament at Gloucester in 1378. For the duration of the parliament, the chronicler of Gloucester complained of intense overcrowding and the trampling of greenery in the cloister by ball games and wrestling. One architectural curiosity it contains is a fireplace overmantel traced with the lines of mouldings. This seems to be a recycled fragment of a floor on which a medieval mason drew up architectural designs, a very rare survival.
Fig 3: The broad entrance hall of the Deanery.
Under the occupation of the prior, the lodging underwent one more important change. In 1422, the church was slightly shortened and its west front rebuilt. As part of this project, the adjacent chapel and cloister porch beneath it were also trimmed back. Then, the whole façade was reworked as we see it today beneath two gables, the larger corresponding to the 12th-century abbot’s tower (as refronted in the 13th century) and the smaller to the chapel and doorway to the cloister porch.
As part of this work, some new window tracery and detailing was inserted into the building, as, for example, the new chapel window and the spectacular door beneath it. More surprising, however, is the appearance within both gables of zig-zag mouldings, which must be recycled from the Romanesque fabric. It’s a peculiarity of the late-medieval architecture at Gloucester, as, for example, in the 1330s south transept of the church, that it makes decorative use of Romanesque detailing in this way. Was the monastery consciously trying to advertise its deep history?
Fig 4: The handsome brick frontage of the Deanery, which had been built by 1741. Tall brick piers create a small forecourt to the house. The pedimented front doorcase is a late-18th-century addition.
In 1541, the cathedral community took up residence within the existing precinct in a way that demanded a minimum of physical change. The new Bishop of Gloucester took possession of the abbot’s lodging and the first Dean — William Jennings, who had previously been prior of the immediately adjacent monastery of St Oswald in Gloucester — the prior’s lodging. It would serve his successor deans for the next four centuries. Meanwhile, it’s likely that the canons — who were expected to live independently — occupied the houses used by the obedientiaries. The communal refectory and dormitory were then demolished.
Of the development of the Deanery little can now be said with confidence because it underwent wholesale restoration in the late 19th century. As described in The Builder of June 30, 1863, the work was directed by ‘Messrs. Fulljames & Waller, and… their clerk of the works, Mr. Ashbee’. The report continues ‘the whole of the building has been almost gutted to remove the monstrosities which have been gradually accumulating… Gothic doorways, Norman windows, columns, capitals, and passages are constantly peeping out… Here is a perfect galaxy of architecture’.
Fig 5: The main stair is richly detailed, with three balusters to each step and the ends of the treads carved with orna-ment. The ceiling of the stairwell incorporates a plaster rose and the space may originally have been divided from the upper landing by an arch.
By stripping back the fabric, much was revealed about the medieval interiors, including a built-in medieval lamp on the stairs. What was lost in the process was any sense of how the building had evolved over time. What does survive, however, is a magnificent panelled interior named after perhaps the most famous Dean of Gloucester, William Laud. A portrait of the future and controversial Archbishop of Canterbury presides over the interior (Fig 2). How far this room is a product of 19th-century antiquarian taste is impossible to say, but the panelling is historic and presumably comes from the building.
In 1940, the Dean moved out of the Deanery, which has since served as offices, and took up residence in a Georgian house overlooking Miller’s Green. This attractive green space within the monastic precinct was formerly the site of the abbey mill. The house is a symmetrical brick box, five window bays wide and three storeys high (Fig 4). It is enclosed to the front by a railing and massive brick piers topped by urns. The central front door is set in a shallow projection that rises to the parapets and the main front is framed to the sides by shallow pilasters.
Fig 6: The drawing room, with large, late-18th-century windows overlooking a garden that extends to the rear and side of the building.
It’s clear from surviving leases that the present house occupies a site that was divided up by 1700 into several smallholdings. An engraving of the cathedral published in 1712 shows the associated houses hugging the precinct wall in what is now the Dean’s back garden. It is not known who cleared these structures or who built the present house, but it was in existence by 1741, when it was leased to a certain ‘Peter Haynes gent’. He was probably the son of another Peter Haynes, a grocer of Gloucester, who was prominent in the affairs of the town from the 1670s. If this identification is correct, Haynes clearly hoped to advance himself socially by leasing the house. His use of the title ‘gentleman’ may reflect his purchase of a nearby estate at Tibberton. If he was trying to advance himself, however, the effort came to nothing; his son died young and Tibberton passed to his daughter, who sold it. Whatever the case, it’s very unlikely that Haynes had anything to do with the design or form of the building in the close, which looks as if it was created by a local builder to a high standard.
The front door opens into a large hall that runs through the full depth of the house to the main stair (Fig 3). This is framed at the far end of the room by a broad arch. Immediately to the left of the hall is the dining room (Fig 7). According to the Historic England listing description, its Georgian panelling and fireplace were installed here in about 1935, but it’s not clear where they came from. The drawing room (Fig 6), with views over the garden, opens off the opposite corner of the hall and displays an early-18th-century view of the close showing the Old Deanery. Both rooms are used by the present Dean, the Very Revd Andrew Zihni, for cathedral business and entertaining.
Fig 7: The dining room. Its Georgian panelling was apparently installed in the 1930s, shortly before the building became the Deanery.
The main stair rises to an upper landing that corresponds in size to the hall (Fig 5). Again, it opens into a series of attractively proportioned rooms, which creates a private apartment within the house. The details of doors and fireplaces suggest that the interior was re-fitted in the early 19th century. This would also account for the fact that the windows of the upstairs sitting room have clearly been enlarged and fixed with ironwork balconies.
A neatly contrived service stair opens off the upper landing and gives access to the upper floor. As illustrated here, the rooms show decorative changes made by the partner of the present Dean, Lloyd Wood, an interior designer, to make this building both comfortable as a home and functional as an important working building within the cathedral close.
See more at the Gloucester Cathedral website.
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