Wedding Photographer Lord Leycester Hospital Warwick — Medieval Guild Hall, the Great Hall and the Master’s Garden
Lord Leycester Hospital is one of England’s most remarkably complete and most atmospherically powerful medieval guild complexes — a group of timber-framed guild hall buildings above the West Gate of Warwick, assembled from the 1383 Guildhall of St George and the 1450s guildhall of the Holy Trinity into the picturesque complex of jettied half-timber ranges, the great courtyard and the chapel that stands above the gate arch. Robert Dudley, Earl of Leicester and Elizabeth I’s favourite, converted the complex into an almshouse for his retired soldiers in 1571 and bequeathed to Warwick a medieval guild hall of quite unique character above its medieval gate. For Lord Leycester Hospital wedding photography, the courtyard’s medieval timber frame, the chapel’s medieval interior and the Master’s Garden above the West Gate arch together provide a portrait setting of Tudor and medieval character unmatched in Warwickshire.
The Courtyard, the Great Hall and the Medieval Guildhall Buildings
The main courtyard of Lord Leycester Hospital — the enclosed medieval yard surrounded on three sides by the jettied timber-framed guild hall ranges, whose close-studded half-timbering, projecting upper floors and original leaded windows create a courtyard of English medieval guild hall architecture of considerable completeness — provides the primary portrait setting of the complex: the courtyard’s enclosure, the timber frame’s black-and-white pattern against the pale plaster and the chapel’s arched entry create a composed medieval portrait environment of a kind preserved in this completeness at only a handful of venues. The Great Hall — the medieval high-roofed hall with its original timber roof trusses, the screens passage of medieval convention and the heraldic displays of the Dudley arms and the Bear and Ragged Staff — provides an interior portrait setting of medieval institutional power.
The Master’s Garden, the West Gate and the Warwick Townscape
The Master’s Garden — the small formal garden upon the medieval town wall on the south side of the Hospital, enclosed within the wall’s rampart with views south across the town’s medieval roofscape towards the river and the park beyond — provides an intimate formal garden portrait setting of considerable enclosed medieval charm above the West Gate arch. The West Gate itself — the fourteenth-century gate arch through which the entire complex rises — provides the primary exterior portrait backdrop of the complex: the half-timbered ranges above the gate arch, the medieval street approaching from the town centre and the castle’s towers visible further along Mill Street together create a Warwick townscape portrait of medieval completeness. Warwick Castle — the EarlY’s ancestral seat three minutes’ walk from the Hospital — extends the medieval Warwick portrait day.