Trinity College, Bristol - Stoke House

Stoke House

Stoke House, the building that its now known as Trinity College, has been designated by English Heritage as a grade II* listed building. It was built by Sir Robert Cann and probably completed in 1669. This date is above the front door in rather untrustworthy lettering (which may have been added much later). However, the date fits with the building's style and other documentary evidence. The doorway is certainly Jacobean in character, including excessively twisted columns of three wound strands, with naive Corinthian capitals containing a mask each. The spandrels above the door contain allegorical females either side of the Cann family crest. The sidewalls of the porch are typical of c.1670 with upright oval windows keyed into oblong panels, here under steep open pediments. The oak staircase within the building is characteristically mid-seventeenth century. The three ogee gables along the front roofline are also quite Jacobean in character, but the rest of house is much altered. The original cross windows (cf. J. Kip's 1712 engraving) were replaced with gothic versions c. 1750 as shown in John Turner's 1791 painting of the house. In 1872 Foster & Wood installed mullioned-and-transomed windows in double-height canted bays with projecting curved centres and strapwork cresting. They also reinstated the oval windows in the gables with reference to those in the porch. Two rooftop cupolas were removed in the twentieth century. At the rear of the building two three-story blocks were added in the seventeenth century, one at an angle to the house.