Worcester College

Worcester College sits behind a high stone wall, marked by its sprawling, sunken front lawn that dips well below the street level. This depression is all that remains of the former canal basin that once brought coal and timber to the city. Before the college moved in, the site housed Gloucester College, a medieval Benedictine foundation that collapsed during the English Reformation. The surviving monastic cottages along the north side still retain their original fifteenth-century stone carvings, keeping watch over the later, classical quadrangle.