Historic Coventry Trust is starting work on the protection and restoration of Whitefriars Gatehouse, starting with the roof.
The Trust has submitted a planning application for the repair of the roof of the Gatehouse. The following is an extract from the Design, Access and Heritage Statement that accompanied the planning application….
Whitefriars Gatehouse is a Grade II* listed building situated at 118 Much Park Street. The 14th century sandstone structure originally served as the postern (outer) gatehouse to the Carmelite Whitefriars Monastery, remnants of which still stand off London Road in Coventry. It was later adapted into residential dwellings and, in the 1970s, it was adapted for use as a Toy Museum by the late Ron Morgan, who passed away in 2007. The building was subsequently subjected to an arson attack and restored by Coventry City Council. The Gatehouse now awaits a new lease of life.
Ron Morgan was a long-term Member of Coventry City Council during the 1960s and 1970s, at the same time as working as a potter based in one of the ground floor rooms at Whitefriars Gate. Ron campaigned passionately for the preservation of Coventry’s heritage and helped restore Whitefriars Gate in the 1970s. Ron was involved with the Coventry Society, the city’s civic society, which helped form the Charterhouse Coventry Preservation Trust, later to become the Historic Coventry Trust.
Historic Coventry Trust’s proposals for Whitefriars Gatehouse are to reintroduce residential units into the sandstone structure and to provide other residential and office space through sensitively designed new units adjoining the gable ends and to the rear of the Gatehouse.
Whitefriars Gate is statutorily listed Grade II* and therefore falls within the top 5% of listed buildings in the country.
Today, the Gate stands in relative isolation on Much Park Street, with larger office blocks set back from the street surrounding it, predominantly housing various Coventry University departments. Originally however, it sat within a built-up street front, part of a continuous row of properties of various dates. This street pattern was established prior to the construction of the gate, and continued up until the damage of the Second World War, and the systematic replanning of Coventry city centre which ensued.
Wright has suggested that the area of Much Park Street had a suburban character in the 12th and 13th century, and was more intensively developed, and became urban, in the 14th century. This pattern of settlement was seen in excavated evidence of the site immediately south of the Whitefriars Gate, which observed the formalising of plot sizes, and the construction of buildings, mostly timber framed on stone footings, in the 14th century. The area appears to have been particularly associated with metal working.
The gate itself was originally thought to have been all medieval, providing controlled access to the Whitefriars monastery (Carmelite), the remains of which now stand on the east side of the Ring Road.
The monastery had another internal gate that was badly damaged in the Blitz, situated in what is now the London Road roundabout. This was the main gatehouse to the monastery with access directly off the road to London. In the 1430s the town wall was constructed along the London Road, blocking the access to the internal gate. It appears the Carmelites acquired a plot of land on Much Park Street to provide alternative access and that they erected a sandstone screen with statue niches to make a grand statement at the beginning of the long diversion to the monastery itself. When John Hales purchased the dissolved monastery in the mid 16th century, he probably had another wall built parallel to the original arch and screen.
A room was slung between the two and covered in a steeply pitched roof. This explains why the room on the first floor falls below the arch, the punched-hole nature of the windows and doors on the street elevation, and the lack of solid side walls that would be expected in any medieval gate. (The walls of pre-existing properties must have been ‘borrowed’).
In the 18th and 19th centuries extensions were built on the rear of the neighbouring ancient inn to the north, known as ‘The Rose’. This property is documented from the 16th century.
Much Park Street was badly bombed during the Second World War leaving few of the ancient buildings that lined the street standing.
As a consequence of enemy action and post-war clearances, Whitefriars Gatehouse and the remaining fragment of ‘The Rose’ were left attached and amalgamated into one property. The rear wing may have functioned as part of the inn originally, but it is clear that the upper part was also at one time a workshop. The large multi-light window probably illuminated either watchmaking or ribbon weaving, important industries in 18th and 19th century Coventry.
The precise condition and nature of the existing roof structure of the gatehouse was not uncovered until the internal lath and plaster ceilings were removed along with the roofing tiles and bituminous felt in the current phase of repair works. It had been wrongly assumed that the roof had been largely rebuilt after the air raids of the second world war and the later arson attack. What was uncovered however was a mixture of historic roof timbers and various modern timbers added at later dates in an attempt to address the failing condition of the original roof structure and its movement.
The historic roof timbers do not and cannot form a structurally sound roof without extensive invasive work.
The roof is in extremely poor condition with past attempts at re-levelling the roof evident. The present structure is reliant on a mixture of support from the historic timbers and from the replacement rafters. Reinforcement of the purlins is necessary as both are compromised. The wall plates need areas of repair. The present modern rafters and levelling battens are generally in short lengths, over distorted and often unsound or unfixed. The roof ridge line has moved west as well as being distorted vertically. The line of the west roof plane is currently better than the east, but more of the modern timbers must be replaced on the west than on the east. On the east pitch there are short sprockets over the eaves spanning from wall plate to wall face, on the west there are short rafters spanning between wall plate and wall face, in neither case is the eaves on the outer face well-constructed, with no outer wall plate and on the west, much of the masonry below and between the rafters is insecure.
[The proposed remedial works include stripping out the modern timbers and rafters, introducing a steel structure to support the historic structure with new timbers to support the roof. The new roof will sit higher than the existing roof line where it runs into the 2 gable ends. The resulting gaps will be infilled with brickwork raising the gables slightly. The chimney at the north end of the roof will need to be raised by 3 brick courses to lift it above the new roof line.]
The benefits of this approach are that all of the existing historic timbers will remain in place, and as they will essentially not be structural, they can be more subtly repaired rather than having to scarf on new sections as would be necessary otherwise.
Conclusions: The condition of the roof is significantly different to that anticipated. The extent and condition of the surviving historic timbers and the poor quality of the later timbers which had been introduced to level the roof was unexpected. It would require significant invasive works and loss of historic fabric to repair the historic timbers to restore their function as the main roof structure. The option to re-introduce a structurally independent roof over the top of the historic fabric would allow it to be retained without significant intervention and further loss of historic fabric. For this reason, the proposed approach would be the most appropriate and will result in no substantial harm to the significance of the heritage asset.
The Design, Access and Heritage Statement has been prepared for Historic Coventry Trust by Hawkes Edwards, Chartered Architects and Historic Building Consultants, Stratford on Avon.