The College of St George at Windsor Castle was founded by Edward III in 1348 to support the newly created Order of the Garter, and to this day fulfills the same primary purpose. The domestic buildings provided for the Warden, Canons and Priest-Vicars — now the Deanery and Canons Cloister — are an astonishing survival: despite enlargement and alteration over the centuries, a significant amount of the mid-fourteenth-century fabric survives, though often hidden from view. A recent program of refurbishment and conservation revealed much hitherto unknown evidence for the way the buildings were constructed, their fittings and decoration and their subsequent evolution. The author maintained a continuous ‘watching brief’ throughout the refurbishment works, the results of which are published here for the first time.
The archaeological evidence is supplemented by the excellent survival of documentation, both for the initial construction of the buildings and their subsequent development: we know the precise date of each stage of construction, the cost and even the names of the workmen involved. The post-medieval history of the buildings is also highly significant, and for this period we have the benefit of knowing more about the deans and canons who influenced the ways their dwellings developed, and of a continued wealth of documentary evidence.
