College of Vicars Choral

The college viewed from the tower of Hereford Cathedral

The College of Vicars Choral is a building in Hereford, England, which was originally built to house the vicars choral, or lay clerks, of the adjacent Hereford Cathedral.

The vicars choral at Hereford were incorporated as a college in 1395, at which time there were twenty-seven members. Their number was reduced to twelve, with an additional five lay members, in 1637, and the college was dissolved in 1937. Its building currently houses offices and residences for the cathedral staff.

The college building stands to the south-east of the cathedral. Its earliest parts date from c. 1473, when Bishop Stanberry had the college moved from Castle Street a short distance to the east. It takes the form of a quadrangle, with four two-storey ranges around a central courtyard; The courtyard-facing elevations of the ranges contain a cloister on their ground floor. There is an early seventeenth century chapel in the east range, and a late seventeenth century hall projects south from the south range. The college is connected to the cathedral by a corridor probably of late fifteenth-century date which runs between the north-west corner of the former and the south-west transept of the latter.