Windsor Castle, our largest and oldest royal residence, is not just a remarkable monument, it is home to two great historic institutions: the Royal Household and the College of St George. The college, which occupies the castle’s Lower Ward, is the only collegiate foundation in England to have survived the Reformation. St George’s Chapel, a masterpiece of Perpendicular architecture, dominates the Lower Ward visually. Three or four services a day are held there for 365 days a year. Windsor is one of Britain’s greatest demonstrations of both architectural and institutional continuity.

In the Lower Ward, as in the Upper Ward, there is a sharp division between the public and private sides of the castle. Over a million visitors a year pass through its gates, many of whom attend services in St George’s. However, hidden behind the magnificent chapel there is a more private world, like a compressed cathedral close, which is seen by far fewer people, for this is where St George’s clergy and staff live and work. This unique place is the subject of John Crook’s new monograph.

The book does not cover the whole of the Lower Ward. The outer curtain walls, the chapel, the Military Knights’ lodgings, the timber-framed Horseshoe Cloister where the chapel’s lay clerks live, the Curfew Tower with its fifteenth-century bell-frame: these and other buildings are not included. Dr Crook’s subject is the central group of residential buildings, chiefly fourteenth century in their origins, that lie behind and to the east of the chapel. The author, a distinguished medieval scholar and architectural historian, has for many years been consultant archaeologist to the dean and canons. In this role he has carried out or supervised numerous rounds of archaeological survey and investigation, in particular arising from a major renovation of these buildings of c 2004–15. Hence this book.

The book is organised chronologically, with a clear and simple structure. It is well and clearly written throughout. In the first chapter, Dr Crook sets out the prehistory of the Lower Ward – its twelfth-century origins, when a great hall and associated chambers were built there, and the gradual replacement of the original earth and timber outer defences with stone curtain walls. Henry iii chose Windsor to be a secure home for his children, after the birth of Lord Edward in 1239. Major alterations were made to the ‘Kings Houses’ in the Upper Ward to adapt them for this purpose, while the Lower Ward was altered to serve the outward and public aspects of a royal residence: new chambers and a magnificent chapel were built in the 1240s. These twelfth- and thirteenth-century structures formed the matrix for the college buildings, which developed in the mid fourteenth century.

The key period here, as for the castle as a whole, was the reign of Edward iii. In Chapter 2 Dr Crook sets out, briefly but clearly, how in 1348 the king established twin collegiate foundations, at Windsor and at Westminster. Among other things, this signalled that Windsor was henceforth to be the principal royal residence after Westminster. It was to be the seat of his new order of chivalry, the Order of the Garter, which was to become a permanent, enduring institution, linked to the new college and chapel, all dedicated to St George. Henry iii’s splendid chapel was adapted for the purpose: it was fitted out with complete new stalls, a new suite of stained glass windows and new roof.

Chapters 2 and 3 are the foundation for the rest of the book, for they set out how the new buildings for the college went up c 1350–5. Windsor’s architectural history in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries is relatively well documented, but, as Dr Crook notes, the work of the 1350s is recorded in outstanding, almost unique detail for this period, for the full building accounts survive in the Exchequer Rolls: it is, as he observes, ‘an architectural historian’s dream’. So, Chapter 2 sets out the construction of the new stone buildings: notably the vestry, the chapter house and the dean’s cloister. One curious omission is the famous Aerary porch: the original entrance to the college buildings with a muniment and treasury room above, which is not discussed here. This may be because the building was not affected by the 2004–15 works, but the omission is a little regrettable, for the Aerary forms an integral part of the complex, and its inclusion would have permitted a fuller discussion of the college buildings’ place in the development of the Perpendicular style.

Chapter 3 moves on to the building of the timber-framed Canons’ Cloister itself. This, and the adjacent deanery, form the principal subject of the book. It is a most distinctive and historically important building: a rectangular group arranged around a long, narrow garth, originally two storeys high and divided into twenty-three narrow lodgings linked by a cloister-arcade below, each lodging having one room on the ground floor and a larger room above. Dr Crook sets this out clearly, explaining how the lodgings originally housed twelve canons and eleven priest-vicars. As the author observes, it was perhaps the earliest timber-framed collegiate accommodation in England: it doubtless helped to inspire numerous later collegiate lodgings, like the famous closes at Wells and Chichester cathedrals. The building is described in detail, with numerous helpful plans and survey drawings. The framing was workaday, but with finely cusped arches to the ground-floor arcades. A lot of the upper facades were replaced in subsequent rounds of repair, but, as Dr Crook shows, much original fabric survives in the cross-partitions, floor-frames and roof-frames. Indeed, two substantial areas of medieval boarded flooring survive. Evidence of the steep stairs to the upper chambers, and of the tiled hearths that heated them, help to fill out the picture. The renovation works of 2004–15 also turned up evidence for early schemes of painted decoration.

Chapter 4 describes the deanery, whose plan and historic development are very complex. Here, Dr Crook builds on survey work done by his predecessor, Tim Tatton-Brown, working with Jill Atherton, during Patrick Mitchell’s years as dean. The original warden’s chamber was on the first floor of the east range of the dean’s cloister, above the first chapter house. There was probably a timber-framed hall from an early stage, to the north of this, with a kitchen wing. The hall was replaced with a substantial cross-wing, running east–west, probably in the 1490s. This and the chamber wing remain the core of the present deanery.

Chapter 5 traces the evolution of the Canons’ Cloister up to the Civil War. In the first major development, the canons managed to ease out the vicars by around 1409: eventually they were housed in the spacious Horseshoe Cloister, one of the developments which accompanied Edward iv’s great rebuilding of the chapel itself. So, the twelve canons now shared the Canons’ Cloister, and thus began a long and complex history in which the original twenty-three bays were laterally converted and altered to form fewer and larger residences. Certain canons were permitted to make ambitious additions to their houses – notably ‘House 6’, extended into the cloister garth itself with a ‘show facade’, which is still there with its brick-logging. The Catherine Room, a first floor room on the south side, was endowed with mural paintings, tentatively dated here to c 1520–33.

The Civil War saw the canons ejected in 1643, and their houses occupied by royalist prisoners. The Restoration of 1660 saw the canons return and the deanery restored by Dean Bruno Ryves; some of its internal character dates from then. The west end of the Canons’ Cloister was rebuilt in brick with a hipped roof, and is now known as St George’s House. Another major feature, attributed to Dean Christopher Wren, is the famous Garter Tables, with the royal arms and miniature painted arms of successive Garter knights, organised by reign, in what is now the dean’s study; it is surprising to find that the first reference to it is an inventory made after Ryves’ death in 1678.

Chapters 5 and 6 become a detailed exercise in buildings archaeology; in micro-history, almost, as the residences around the cloister were altered for successive canons, who after the Reformation began to be married and to have families and servants. One outstanding source of evidence is cited several times: the Income Book, instituted by the college in the late seventeenth century. This unique document records additions and alterations made to the houses – notably the installation of wainscot, a rule being established that an incoming canon should compensate the previous resident, or his legatees, for the costs thereof.

Chapter 7 carries the story forward from 1830 to the present day. The College of St George had survived the Reformation and the Civil War with its extensive estates and network of dependent parishes intact; however, Victorian reform brought more fundamental changes. The Ecclesiastical Commission Act of 1840 affected St George’s, like cathedral chapters: canonries were reduced in number and estates transferred to the new Ecclesiastical Commissioners. At Windsor, the canonries were reduced from twelve to four, as canons retired or died, the total of four being reached in 1861. This brought changes to the fabric, with the sad loss in 1859 of Denton’s Commons (a fine fifteenth-century building), and one of the houses. As the canons became fewer, the houses became larger, and occasionally lay tenants moved in. The alterations continued: lateral conversions, installation of mezzanine floors and new facilities brought the Canons’ Cloister to a new pitch of complexity, all explained clearly here, with helpful plans and illustrations. Considerable renovation and repair was needed in the late nineteenth century, and it is good to see several of the beautiful coloured drawings produced by Alfred Young Nutt, surveyor to the dean and canons, and also clerk of works on the Royal Household’s side of Windsor, in the later Victorian age.

In the 1950s the Canons’ Cloister and other residential buildings were renovated by the architects Seely & Paget. The roofs were covered with verdigrised copper, which produced an odd effect and did not have a long life expectancy. By the millennium a combination of decaying roofs and redundant services meant that these remarkable buildings once again needed attention. A programme of major renovation and repair was carried out, supervised by the architect Martin Ashley, with Richard Swift as engineer and Graham Sharpe as project manager, all managed with admirable sensitivity. The book bears witness to the excellent quality of this work, in particular the new lead roofs and the finely finished rendered facades to the cloister. Dr Crook was present throughout the process, and, as a result of all this, these buildings are better understood, and probably in better condition, than they have ever been.

The work was largely funded by the Bray Fellowship, a group of long-term supporters of the chapel and college. Great credit should be given to them – and to the College of St George itself. With its estates confiscated in the nineteenth century and with no external sources of funding, the college has nevertheless continued to serve the Crown, to sustain a daily round of sung worship to the highest standards of English choral music and to maintain its historic buildings and heritage. The college and the Bray Fellowship also supported the accompanying archaeological work, and its publication. In return, Dr Crook has done them proud with this excellent monograph, which will surely be the last word on the subject. It is fair to add that Oxbow Books have done Dr Crook and the college proud: the book is beautifully designed and produced, with good and abundant illustrations. It should certainly feature on the bookshelves of anyone with a serious interest in English collegiate foundations, or medieval English architecture or Windsor Castle.