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Detail of the portrait of Humphrey Chetham (1580-1653) now in the Library reading room
Please click on the images to see a larger version.
Chetham's is the most complete late-medieval residential complex to survive in the north west of England. Situated on a sandstone outcrop at the confluence of the Rivers Irwell and Irk, the buildings occupy the site of the manor house of Manchester, which, together with the parish church (now the Cathedral) formed the core of the medieval town.
The buildings date from the second quarter of the fifteenth century. In 1421 Thomas de la Warre, Lord of Manchester and rector of the parish church, obtained a licence from Henry V to refound the church as a collegiate foundation, with a warden, eight fellows, four clerks, and six lay choristers. To accommodate the new body De la Warre made over his baronial hall, which was rebuilt on a collegiate plan.
The building of the college progressed slowly, although in style and design it is entirely homogeneous. The survival of so complete a set of medieval buildings is rare. The troubled history of the buildings, however, make their survival all the more surprising. In 1547 the College was dissolved under the Chantries Act and the buildings were purchased by the Earl of Derby who converted the property into a town residence. The College was refounded as a Catholic foundation by Mary, only to be closed down again on the accession of Elizabeth I. In 1578 it was formally established with a new charter as Christ's College and an arrangement was made with the Earl of Derby to allow the Warden and Fellows to re-occupy the College buildings. Up to the Civil War the buildings remained in the hands of the Stanleys and numerous signs of their ownership are still evident. During the War the buildings were used as a prison and arsenal, parts were allowed to become derelict, and the property was eventually taken over by the Parliamentary Committee of Sequestration. It was then that Humphrey Chetham, a prosperous Manchester merchant, made his first overtures to purchase the College to house a school and library. Chetham died in 1653 before negotiations to purchase the College were completed, and it was left to his executors to carry out his intentions. Under the terms of his will, the bulk of his fortune was to be used to endow a hospital for the maintenance and education of forty poor boys, and to adapt and equip part of the building as a library for the use of scholars. Chetham's Library continues to serve its founders purpose, although the Hospital has modified its activities through the centuries, eventually being re-established as a co-educational music school in 1969.
Chetham's has been the object of attention for many visitors to Manchester over the centuries - you can read some of their comments on our visitors to Manchester page.
The proliferation of nineteenth and twentieth-century buildings on and around the site have made it difficult in the past for the visitor to appreciate the significance of Chetham's location and also the sheer scale of the building. In recent years, however, the clearance of properties to the north of the site enable one to see almost the entire north range of the building. Views of the building from Hunt's Bank and from Victoria Station and also the views from Walker's Croft above the culverted River Irk, give one the impression at least of an elevated site with steps leading down to the river. The river bank, now Victoria Street, sloped down to a small bridge over the Irk, a situation immortalised in the opening pages of Mrs Linnaeus Banks' The Manchester Man. The sloping ground was called Hunt's Bank which became the first name for Victoria Station. The river is significant for at least two reasons. First, the stone of the building was probably transported to the present site on barges or rafts down the river from the quarry in Collyhurst. Secondly, the river remained a plentiful source of fish for the fellows of the College and for the pupils of the school until the pollution of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries made it little more than an open sewer.
Views of Chetham's from Hunt's Bank and Walker's Croft
The outer face of the entrance is an 1816 rebuilding following the original form of a single archway with window above, coat of arms and niche. The inner face has not been restored apart from the gable head. To the left of the archway an external stair leads to a first floor chamber. To the right one can see the remains of the precinct wall up against the Grammar School extension building, erected by Manchester Grammar School, then Chetham's neighbour, in 1873-78.
The gatehouse from Long Millgate and from the yard
From the schoolyard one can see the entire range of the fifteenth-century building. Built of red sandstone with contrasting stone dressings, the entire building is roofed in stone. The original hall (known as the Baronial Hall) and kitchen (Association room) are open to the roof but the remainder of the building is two-storeyed. The north wing running from the gatehouse to the hall has been subject to more alterations than any other part of the building. In the middle of the wing, a through passage gave access to the river, with the remaining ground-floor rooms possibly used as a bakehouse, servants' quarters and guest rooms. These have all been converted to house the school administration. The upper floor with access from the stair to the left of the gatehouse, was formerly two dormitories, and is now a single room housing the school library.
A panorama of the medieval buildings from the yard
The hall measures 13 x 7.3 metres, and is one of the best preserved fifteenth-century examples of its kind. It retains its original oak screen of three equal sections, of which the central part was originally moveable, but is now fixed. The purpose of the screen was to keep out draughts and also to conceal the entrances to the buttery and pantry situated at the back of the hall. On the west side, projecting into the quadrangle, is an oriel bay built in the nineteenth century in the place of a large wall fireplace. In the days of the College, however, there was a hearth in the centre of the hall and smoke escaped through an opening in the roof. The stone flags in the hall and cloisters were added in the 1650s as part of the alterations to the Hospital and Library, and before that there was simply a dirt floor covered with straw. Another striking feature of the hall is the oak canopy projecting over the dais. In front of the dais is a small square bay with a low window towards the court.
Two views of the Baronial Hall
This room, which is open to the roof, was until recently the kitchen of the College and Hospital. Measuring 7 x 7.3 metres, the room contains the remains of two fireplaces on the north and east walls. The larger, in the north wall, has an enormous square-headed lintel above which are examples of cooking equipment. The room is lit by two lines of windows facing the courtyard. There is no longer any evidence of the louvre in the two bay roof and indeed many of the room's original features have now been lost.
The hall forms the east side of the quadrangle. The other three ranges contain the rooms of the fellows of the college, each entered by a separate doorway from the cloister walks. The cloister ranges round three sides of the court, and is remarkable in that it is double-storeyed; the upper walk gave access to the Fellows' bed chambers in the two ranges on the west and south side now occupied by the Library. Nearly all partition walls on both the upper and ground floor were removed when the Library was created in 1654-65 but there remains an example of a lath and daub wall that was uncovered during renovations in the 1990s.
Two views of the cloisters and one looking up the old stairs to first floor level
The court is traditionally known as the fox court, the result of a legend that has arisen concerning the well. By looking through one of the three peep-holes into the well, one is said to stare into the eyes of a fox, an effect caused by a trick of the light reflected through the other two holes. The sandstone in the court has been less drastically treated than elsewhere in the exterior of the building and provides graphic testimony of the effects of the city's pollution on soft stone.
A view of the Fox Court (left)and of the Fish court from the cloisters (right)
The other court, situated at the north west end of the building, is traditionally known as the fish court on account of the fact that there are remains of a fish pond used to store the fish caught from the River Irk below.
The Audit room, so called because it was in this room that the feoffees or governors of the Hospital and Library held their business meetings, together with the Library Reading Room above, originally formed the Warden's lodgings. The room measures 7 x 7.3 metres with a small square bay in the middle of the external courtyard wall. The main features of the room are the timber ceiling of moulded beams and bosses, of which one depicts a monster with a child in its mouth, and the plaster frieze and panelling, both of which were probably inserted as part of the alterations carried out in the 1650s. The room contains some of the best furniture in the Hospital and Library, including a walnut settee of the reign of George I with cabriole legs resting on claw and ball feet and arms terminating in eagle heads ; a set of twelve mahogany ladder-back chairs dating from about 1770 ; three north country oak chairs with carved panel backs and a sixteenth-century turned chair with triangular seat, which traditionally is said to have belonged to the founder. The most unusual piece in this room is a one-fingered seventeenth century lantern clock, which was presented to the Library in 1869.
One of the bosses on the ceiling of the Audit Room
The Library originally occupied two long first-floor wings situated at right angles to one another on the west and south sides of the quadrangle. In the days of the college these were used as the fellows' dormitories, each fellow having a separate bedroom approached by a door from the gallery above the cloister. The south range, from the stairs to the Reading Room, is known as the Mary Chapel Wing and is generally supposed to have been the Fellows' Chapel in the days of the College. The longer wing running from the stairs to the Office is known as the Priests' Wing. In its arrangement and furnishings, the Library recalls a number of the Oxford and Cambridge college libraries, and particularly those of Merton and St. John's Colleges, Oxford. At Chetham's however, the presses or bookcases, instead of being arranged on either side of a central walk, are all placed on the outer side of the two rooms so giving a passageway against the wall press on the inner side. The presses were originally about 2 metres tall, with three shelves on each side above a sloping desk. In his will Chetham stipulated that the books should be chained, and evidence of chaining can still be seen on the presses where some of the locks still remain. The chaining of books was abandoned in the 1740s, and gates, apparently a unique feature of the Library, were substituted as a security measure. The presses themselves have been raised on two occasions to their present height of 3.6 metres. The oak stools in the aisle were originally the only seats ; the close spacing of the presses did not leave sufficient room for the usual back-to-back benches.
Chetham's Library: the Priests' and Mary Chapel wings
In the days of the College this was part of the warden's accommodation. Following the alterations of the 1650s to create the Hospital and Library, this room was used to hold meetings of the feoffees and contains some of the best furniture on the site. In the centre of the room is a very large gate leg table surrounded by a set of twenty-four leather backed chairs, of Cromwellian type, with oak frames, square backs and turned legs connected by a stretcher carved with scroll work. Both the table and chairs were purchased in the 1650s for the use of the feoffees. The two other tables in the room were probably made for the Library in the 1650s by the joiner Richard Martinscroft who was responsible for making the presses and library stools. Both tables are made oak draw-top tables of very unusual design. The tall-case clock with the barometer attached to the front was donated by Nicholas Clegg, an old boy of the school, in 1695. On leaving school Clegg settled in London, where after serving his apprenticeship, he set up as an instrument maker. The barometer is of his own making but the clock was made by Thomas Aynsworth of Westminster.
Above the fireplace is a portrait of Humphrey Chetham, the only contemporary portrait of the founder. Above that is a remarkable example of early-eighteenth-century carving, an elaborate heraldic and emblematic display commemorating Chetham and his foundation. In the centre appear the arms of Chetham flanked by tall pedestals resting on books and supporting torches symbolic of learning. To the left and right are a cock and a pelican feeding her young, whilst in the centre is an eagle.
See more about the Reading Room paintings
See more about the Reading Room furniture
Chetham's Library: two views of the Reading Room and one of the Gorton chained library
Hyde's Cross used to stand at the junction of Fennel Street, Hanging Ditch, Withy Grove and Todd Street until the 1840s when Corporation Street was created as a main thoroughfare into the town from the north. The cross is shown on a 1650 map of Manchester as a Latin cross on a pedestal. It was erected probably in the sixteenth century on land held by a family called Hyde. The site was adjacent to the church and probably the cross was for a time a sanctuary cross. It predated the establishment of a market for cattle, corn and potatoes created around the site in the middle of the eighteenth century, which lasted for over a hundred years. The shaft of the cross, inscribed with the letters "W.H." and "H.B.," was presented to Chetham's in 1913.
Hyde's Cross: only the base survives
The building to the South of College House located on Long Millgate was built in 1870 as an extension to Manchester Grammar School. The original grammar school building was situated to the right of the gatehouse in the place now occupied by Chetham's accommodation block. The two sections of the grammar school were joined at first floor level by a bridge which only served to dwarf the gatehouse entrance to Chetham's. Following the move of the grammar school to Rusholme in the 1930s the Long Millgate buildings remained empty during the 1930s. The old building was destroyed during World War II and in the 1950s the extension was used as teacher training college. Following its closure in 1978 the building was taken over by Chetham's.
The former Manchester Grammar School Extension, now known as the Millgate building
The free standing sandstone building in the yard, now known as the Vallins Art Centre, was designed by the celebrated architect Alfred Waterhouse as a school house to accommodate an expanded school population. Built by Thomas Clay and Sons of Manchester at a cost of £4,000, the building was opened in April 1878. Originally the walls were faced in Runcorn stone and the roof covered with green Westmorland slates. Alone of all the buildings on the site, it was designed to stand in harmony with the College House.
The Vallins Arts Centre
The building to the rear of the Library, known as the Palatine building, were acquired by the School in 1969 in order to provide accommodation and tuition rooms for the newly created School of Music. The building was originally a Railway Hotel built in 1843.
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