Barnard Castle School

Barnard Castle School

Independent school built 1883-6 by the architects Clark & Moscrop of Darlington. Constructed for the Trustees of Benjamin Flounders in association with the Trustees of St. John's Hospital, Barnard Castle, and a Durham University Committee. The building is constructed of rock-faced sandstone with ashlar plinth, quoins and dressings. The roof is covered with graduated Lakeland slate and features stone gable copings and chimneys.

The plan is symmetrical with north, east and west wings radiating from a central projecting office block. A sanatorium wing was added to the left in 1889-90, with a swimming-bath block added in 1896 and a science block in 1899-1900. A rear swimming pool and science laboratories are also attached.

The building is designed in Jacobean style. The south elevation towards Newgate rises to three storeys with attics and displays a 6:3:6-window range. Steps lead up to a central door set within a frontispiece with Ionic order columns on the ground floor and Tuscan columns on the two upper floors. The door itself is many-panelled with an overlight featuring decorative glazing bars in a round arch with imposts, flanked by narrow round-headed lights with glazing bars. A large elaborate bracket supports a first-floor oriel, which is flanked by niches. The second floor contains a mullioned-and-transomed window with flanking niches. A top balustrade with obelisk finials completes the composition. Floor strings run continuously across the front to all windows, which have between 2 and 6 lights, with smaller windows on the upper floors. These upper windows have filleted ovolo moulding to their mullions and transoms and are recessed in flat stone surrounds. Triple gables project over the entrance block, each containing a small 3-light window. Five gabled dormers rise from the eaves on each side.

The sanatorium to the left is linked to the main block by a corridor with shouldered arches. This wing breaks forward with a 7-light window on the ground floor and 9-light windows on the upper floors set within a front gable. The returns feature 5 tall 2-light windows on each floor. The roof includes stone coping to all gables and a tall glazed lantern positioned over the junction of the three wings.

The interior preserves most of its original detail. Principal offices and classrooms feature 17th-century style carved and moulded stone chimneypieces, with simpler corniced stone chimneypieces in other classrooms. Doors are of rail-and-stile construction with 6 equal panels, or classroom doors with upper panels glazed. Architraves, boarded classroom dados and cornices are throughout. The ground floor contains a Big School to the right and a dining hall to the left, both panelled with Tudor-flower frieze. The dining hall features doorcases with broken pediments on architraves. The central well beneath the lantern has diabolo balustraded galleries with arched entrances to the three wings, wrought-iron roof ties, gallery and boarded dado at each level. An enclosed stair to the rear right is cantilevered with a high grip handrail on stick balusters. The swimming bath has a roof of large renewed A-trusses of laminated wood with paired and bolted collars, together with a boarded pine ceiling and lantern to the cupola.

Originally founded as the North Eastern County School, the name was changed to Barnard Castle School in 1924.