Prior Pursglove College, Including Master's House, Gymnasium and Assembly Hall is a Grade II listed building in the Redcar and Cleveland local planning authority area, England. First listed on 25 April 1984. College, grammar school, house. 9 related planning applications.
Prior Pursglove College, Including Master's House, Gymnasium and Assembly Hall
- WRENN ID
- buried-barrel-ash
- Grade
- II
- Local Planning Authority
- Redcar and Cleveland
- Constituency
- Middlesbrough South and East Cleveland MP: Luke Myer (Lab)
- Country
- England
- Date first listed
- 25 April 1984
- Type
- College, grammar school, house
- Address
- Prior Pursglove College, Including Master's House, Gymnasium and Assembly Hall, Church Walk, Guisborough, TS14 6BU
- OS grid reference
- NZ 617 161
- Coordinates
- 54.53721, -1.04747
- Source
- Historic England listing
Description
Prior Pursglove College, originally a grammar school and school house, dates to 1887 and was designed by Alfred Waterhouse. The building is constructed with dressed sandstone at ground floor level, red brick at first floor, and yellow terracotta dressings. The roofs are Westmorland slate, laid in diminishing courses, with clay ridge crestings. The building is in a Tudor style and has two storeys.
The main school building has a rectangular plan and an asymmetrical facade. The ground floor features a plinth and mullioned and transomed casement windows throughout. A chamfered string band runs between the floors, and the first-floor sills form a moulded string. Stepped brick corbels define the verges. A gabled dormer, slightly projecting on corbels, is located off-centre to the right, with a three-light window above a moulded, drop-arched entrance passage featuring granite spur stones. To the left of the entrance are four six-light ground floor windows, followed by six single-light windows to the first floor. To the right are two cross windows to the ground floor and two two-light windows above. The building has three stacks and a timber clock cupola on the ridge to the right, topped with a shallow copper dome. A tablet above the entrance arch records the school's founding in the reign of Queen Elizabeth I in 1561 and its reconstruction in the reign of Queen Victoria in 1887. Carved stones from the original buildings were incorporated into the foundations.
The Master’s House adjoins the east side of the school and exhibits balanced asymmetry with three bays, the left and right bays being wider and gabled. The left-hand bay projects forward. It has six-light windows to the ground floor, three-light windows to the first floor, and a single light to the attic. Moulded strings run across the eaves line of the gables. The central doorway features a moulded architrave and a shouldered fanlight. A two-light window is positioned above the doorway. Attached is a slate-roofed, gabled timber porch with turned shafts on a stone dwarf wall to plinth height. The east elevation is similarly treated.
The listing also includes the gymnasium and assembly hall, which adjoin the north and west sides of the school. These were erected in 1898 by Waterhouse, using the same style and materials.
Local climate
Prior Pursglove College, Including Master's House, Gymnasium and Assembly Hall receives an average of 810 mm of rain a year. This makes it wetter than 50% of listed buildings in the UK. Its exposure to wind-driven rain is greater than that of 52% of listed buildings.
It experiences an average of 23 freeze-thaw cycles a year, fewer than 76% of listed buildings. Of these, 15 follow at least 1 mm of rain in the preceding 48 hours. Average temperatures at this location have risen by 0.3°C per decade since 1991.
Averages for 1991–2020; temperature trend 1991–2025. Figures describe the wider area (a grid cell of roughly 10 km), not the individual site. Contains modified Copernicus Climate Change Service information 2026.
More on this building
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- No EPC on record for this property
- No sale records on file
- Related listed building consents — 9 applications
- Detailed attributes — period, style, materials, features
- Flood risk assessment
- Radon risk assessment
- Weather exposure and heating demand — rain and frost month by month and year by year, wind direction, solar and humidity
Matched applications, energy data and sale records are assembled automatically and may contain errors. Flag incorrect data.
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