Bishop’s Palace

Description

Judging from the microfilm copy from the City Council’s by-law records, the drawings were by Lutyens himself (although not signed). The Cathedral logbook records the new wing ‘containing seven rooms on the ground floor, menservants’ bedrooms, lamp room, dairy etc, and seven servants’ bedrooms on the first floor. The paddock adjoining … was taken into the garden and planted with fruit trees and other special and ordinary trees’…Lutyens’s design has discontinuity between its elevations, partly mitigated by mediaeval walls and an enclosed garden. The North elevation has a feature gable and an imposing entrance, which 1957 alterations made into a garage access. Nominally a shallow Tudor arch with moulded reveals, the surrounding massive masonry suggests mannerist classicism (almost a decade early). The exaggerated keystone is capped by the moulded sill of the mullioned window above. The gable boldly rises above the single storey of the subsidiary rooms. The tall chimneys of local Fletton Brick reflect a tight budget constraint.

The South elevation faces the open garden from which the cathedral is viewed as a backdrop. Butted against the palace, the dominant symmetrical gable sweeps down exposing the barn-like roof and its hipped end; some affinity there with Munstead Wood (1896-7). The ground floor archway is emphasised with alternating long and short voussoirs.

The north and south elevations are of honey-coloured, squared, coursed and faced Ketton limestone. The roof is skilfully laid in Collyweston stone slates in diminishing courses from eaves to ridge.

The secluded east elevation is something else: exposed Flemish-bonded Fletton Brick throughout. The hardwood mullioned windows have leaded lights. A feature of the prominent five-light window is the relieving arch with the gap over the frame head-packed with tile creasing, a characteristic Arts & Crafts feature. The roof is divided by valleys into three hipped sections. Lutyens was fond of triple roofs, also seen in gabled form at Tigbourne Court, Witley (1898-99) and Homewood, Knebworth (1899-1901); while the Ferry Inn, Roseneath (1896-97) boasts an impressive double-hipped rear roof.

(Mervyn Miller, n.d.)

Bibliography

Miller, M., n.d., Little-known Lutyens in Peterborough. [Online] Available from: https://www.lutyenstrust.org.uk/portfolio-item/little-known-lutyens-in-peterborough.

Also Cited In

O’Brien, C. & Nikolaus Pevsner, N. (2014) BEDFORDSHIRE, HUNTINGDONSHIRE, PETERBOROUGH. The Buildings of England. New Haven: Yale University Press.

Listing Grade

I

Listing Reference

1331518

Client

Bishop Edward Carr Glyn