Buildings
Formed from a number of Georgian houses on the Bailey between Durham Cathedral and the River Wear, the college's setting is spectacular. The main house is Haughton House. The houses which make up Cranmer Hall were once owned by the Bowes-Lyon family (the late Queen Mother's family). The majority of the college buildings are grade II listed, with parts of 3 and 4 South Bailey grade II* listed. Linton House, no 1 South Bailey, is Grade 1 listed and has much earlier origins. Before coming into the possession of St John's, it was the main property of St. Chad's College. The frontage seen today was added to an existing timber framed building after the Restoration of the Monarchy.
No 2 South Bailey has distinctive circular 'blind' windows which were revealed during a re-rendering in the 1980s, and enabled Martin Roberts, then Durham City's Conservation Officer, to date the building very precisely to the late 17th century.
The illogically interconnected nature of many of the college buildings regularly results in visitors becoming quite lost. The similarly bizarre nature of college stairways, one of which surprises the unwary by disappearing into a solid wall, adds an element of Escher to the architecture.
The college chapel, dedicated to St Mary, and known as St Mary the Less, is of Norman origin and was rebuilt in the 1840s, and was re-ordered at the turn of the 21st century. It became the college chapel in 1919, before which it had been the parish church of the South Bailey. It is still a chapel of ease in the parish of St Oswald.
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