Old Grammar School (University Music Department)

The Old Grammar School, now part of the University Music Department, was founded in 1541 and largely rebuilt in 1661 for Bishop Cosin. An earlier schoolmaster’s house was altered in the early 18th century, and 19th-century additions include windows designed by Pickering in 1844, and rainwater heads dated 1899 on the house and front wing. The building is a scheduled ancient monument.

The school section is a single-height, four-bay structure. It features a renewed, ledged boarded door within a chamfered Tudor-arched surround, with alternate-block jambs and a label mould in the first bay, and a blocked door in the third. High, renewed three-by-four-light stone mullioned-and-transomed windows are found in the second and third bays, set in double-chamfered reveals and under label moulds that break into half-dormers with gabled kneelers. Cast-iron rainwater heads, one dated 1864, add to the detailing.

The house section is two storeys with six bays, and a projecting wing from the first bay. A 17th-century chamfered Tudor-arched stone surround frames a six-panel door in the fourth bay, complemented by an early 18th-century wood doorcase with an architrave, pulvinated frieze and cornice. Sash windows with glazing bars have renewed thin wood sills on the ground floor and sloping stone sills on the first, with flat brick arches on the ground floor and header-course lintels on the first. A steeply-pitched roof has slightly swept eaves, and a renewed brick chimney sits between the fourth and fifth bays. A later wing on the left features a Tudor-arched door, a slit window with flat coping, and a tripartite stone-mullioned window with bracketed eaves. An 18th-century extruded porch has a blocked entrance and an inserted window.

Inside the school section, the ceiling is plastered above a plain panelled dado. The roof displays scarfed principals supported on wood brackets. Generations of schoolboys' names have been carved into the dado and window sills.

The house interior features a dog-leg staircase with a closed string, having a pulvinated frieze on the lower flight and overlapping boards on the upper. Column balusters are present, with a renewed lower handrail and an upper handrail with a low grip moulding. A panelled dado is found on the stairs, in the vestibule, and in the ground floor right room. Architectural features include architraves, arched doors (duplicated in the principal room), Corinthian columns supporting an enriched cornice of a chimneypiece, and a dentilled ceiling cornice. Bolection moulded doors and architraves are also present, alongside numerous two-panelled doors.