Paignton Palace: The Medieval Bishop's Hall

Paignton Palace: The Medieval Bishop's Hall. . , This ruinous building was long thought to have been a chapel. It has stood isolated in the corner of the churchyard since the 1850s when Church Path was laid out by breaking through the east wall next to the southeast entry. In 1899 the path was widened and a garden created, with its walls retained as revetments against the churchyard. In 2003 the Paignton Preservation and Local History Society, supported by the Heritage Lottery Fund, commissioned the excavation of the site prior to its consolidation. and display, and replacements for the Victorian railings which were removed in World War II. Further research was carried out in 2012 and a full reinterpretation published in the 150th Anniversary Transactions of the Devonshire Association (Vol. 144)., Excavation of the garden by over a metre (the horizontal line across the walls and render indicates the former level) revealed two buildings a large one with a smaller garderobe (latrine) block added to its north side. The main a range to the south with its door in the southeast corner was attached to the high north wall of another building on the other side of Church Path. Both buildings pre-date the erection in the 14th century probably in the period 1330-48, but possibly the 1380s of the crenellated enclosure walls, which included them in its circuit and now enclose the Vicarage garden. The main building is probably the early Bishop's Hall, or possibly his Solar (living chamber), of mid-late 13th century date with an unheated undercroft below a heated room; there is a similar 13th century hall to at Lamphey Palace, Pembrokeshire. A common pattern of expansion is for such blocks be converted into communal use when a larger hall, or Solar, is built at a later date. Here, as at Lamphey and the Bishop of Salisbury's palace at Sonning, this was achieved by the addition of the garderobe block. Its chambers form a mirror plan: the block has four shafts, two from an upper level on the north, indicating another floor; all discharge into a drain below the lower floor level. The lower floor of both buildings appears to have been of beaten earth not uncommon in the understoreys of even the most prestigious buildings, such as Torre Abbey., That the main building had a previous function is clear from the build of the garderobe, which is demonstratively secondary, its main walls abut, rather than bond with, the north wall of the main range, itself built with no architectural concessions. The latrines form distinct and separate chambers of some size, independent of the north wall. The eastern jamb of the doorway into the garderobe survives to a height of nearly 2 metres and shows the scar of a robbed-out dressed-stone arch, though no such sign exists on the western jamb. The height of the main building's southeast threshold - medieval ground level - is 2'/60cm lower than that formed through the north wall. There are no signs of steps to connect these levels, only indications that the original floor of the main range had been raised in a wedge shape to provide a better link between the different levels.