Some work relating to our Restoration period (1668) stone door case, which houses a wooden door (early C19th, replacing the Tudor wooden door from the 1550s and the time of Old Sir Rowland), saw the gilding of its moulding today.
The architectural feature of the door case is an architectural meditation on the Book of Ezekiel and has a been associated with Christopher Wren. The approach to the door case is from Chess Court.
The process of gilding the wooden door within the 1668 door case, located in Chess Court at Soulton Hall, is currently underway.
It is noted that original treatments of such door cases often included painted elements like coats of arms, a practice still evident in locations such as Oxford and Cambridge.
A future phase of the restoration will involve the removal of the non-original owl finials, which were added after 1945, and their replacement with historically accurate finials.
The Great Gate of Christ’s College – lately restored and gilded – showing the more ‘extra’ tastes of earlier times
