Description

BRISTOL

ST5873SE COLSTON STREET
901-1/11/85 (East side)
04/03/77 Foster's Almshouses and attached
walls, railings and gates
(Formerly Listed as:
COLSTON STREET
(East side)
Foster's Almshouses)

GV II*

Includes: Nos.8-11 Foster's Almshouses CHRISTMAS STEPS.
Almshouses. W wing 1861, N wing 1872, S and E wings 1880-83.
By Foster and Wood.
MATERIALS: brick with black diaper work, limestone dressings,
ridge and lateral stacks and tiled hipped roofs with leaded
finials and tops of towers.
PLAN: double-depth plan to 3 sides of a courtyard with a S
wing. French Burgundian Gothic Revival style.
EXTERIOR: 2 storeys, basement and attic; 6:5:5-window ranges
to inside of courtyard. Moulded ground-floor drips, ovolo
eaves cornices carved with fruit and leaves, decorative iron
gutters, with dragons to hoppers and across the down pipe at
drip height; good cast-lead foliate finials to the ends of the
hips, decorative ridge tiles, ridge stacks to each end of roof
with diagonal ribs and moulded cornices to each range, and
similar lateral stacks with linked pairs of stacks. Mullion
and casement windows, decorative narrow windows with trefoil
ogee heads, with metal casements.
The courtyard has square 3-storey towers in the inner corners
with open elliptical ground-floor arches on round columns,
with an ogee hood with crockets to the right-hand tower rising
through a relief carving of the almshouses; first-floor corner
statue niches with canted canopies, a figure in the right-hand
one, with 2-light second-floor windows, and leaded ogee
pyramidal roofs with corner cast-lead crockets and finials.
Gabled timber-framed 2 storey porches to the centre of the E
range and left of centre of the N range with open 2-centre
arches, open each side on the first floor to full-width stone
balconies on brackets with lattice timber railings, which
extend into a timber winder stair tower in the NW corner, with
8 corner buttresses and a central newel post, and a tiled
conical roof; the S range has a gabled timber porch with
moulded curved sides; double half-glazed doors. Cross windows
to the N range, 3-light mullion windows to the E and S; a
corner oriel on the SW corner of the courtyard has a carved
moulded base, aprons and heads, attached corner buttresses,
and a conical lead roof with good finial.
The elevation to Christmas Steps is a 10-window range, with a
ground-floor string, first-floor continuous drip and label
moulds; matching ground and first-floor windows, canted
2-light oriels 2 and 4 from the left, cross windows 1, 2 and 4
from the right, single mullion windows the rest, a 2-light
dormer 3 from the left with a square panel in the gable.
Basement arcade of 6 semicircular arches on chamfered square
columns with octagonal capitals and bases, getting taller to
the left, with plate-glass shop fronts.
Colston Street front is a 6-window range with a stepped
plinth, canted oriel 2 from the right with a 3-light window
beneath, with a right-hand lateral stack. Rear elevations have
4 gabled dormers with triple quatrefoils, separated by a
set-back corner block.
INTERIOR: stone floors on moulded beams, stone winder stair
with wrought-iron barleysugar balusters and newels, moulded
rails, panelled shutters and 4-panel doors, with barleysugar
window catches.
SUBSIDIARY FEATURES: attached front wall across the courtyard
has sunken quatrefoils and a wrought-iron railing with
fleur-de-lys and small finials, lamps on square piers to
elaborate wrought-iron double gates. Rear retaining wall has
attached spike-headed wrought-iron railings.
HISTORICAL NOTE: Foster's almshouses were founded by John
Foster in 1483. A finely detailed composition accounting well
for the lower Christmas Street elevation, and modelled on the
Hotel Dieu, Beaune.
(Gomme A, Jenner M and Little B: Bristol, An Architectural
History: Bristol: 1979-: 315; The Buildings of England:
Pevsner N: North Somerset and Bristol: London: 1958-: 434;
Crick C: Victorian Buildings in Bristol: Bristol: 1975-: 29).

Listing NGR: ST5860873171

External Links

• Historic England Listing
• Foster's Almshouses, Bristol at Wikipedia
• Wikidata Q5473554

External links are from the relevant listing authority and, where applicable, Wikidata. Wikidata IDs may be related buildings as well as this specific building. If you want to add or update a link, you will need to do so by editing the Wikidata entry.

Recommended Books

• 
  London 4: North: North v. 4 (Pevsner Architectural Guides: Buildings of England)
• 
  A Buying and Owning a Listed Building: A Brief Guide
• 
  Nottinghamshire (Pevsner Architectural Guides: Buildings of England)
• 
  Herefordshire (Pevsner Architectural Guides: Buildings of England)
• 
  [(Shropshire)] [By (author) Nikolaus Pevsner] published on (January, 1958)
• 
  Cork: City and County (Pevsner Architectural Guides: Buildings of Ireland)