Former Westminster Road School And Schoolhouse, Now Centre And Flats

The building comprises a former girls' primary school, now a community centre, with an attached former schoolhouse, now flats. Constructed between 1865 and 1867, it was designed by John Douglas for the second Marquis of Westminster, with later extensions. The building is constructed of brown Flemish bond brick with grey-green slate roofs, and is of an asymmetric plan with a lancet style.

The school element features a central hall set back, with differing wings to each side containing a smaller hall, schoolrooms, and ancillary rooms. The two-storey schoolhouse adjoins the left side and is symmetrical in design. The schoolhouse has two steps leading to a replaced boarded door and a one-pane fanlight within a pointed arch. It has a tripartite window, now a 2;2;2 pane sash, to each side, and two pairs of shorter two-pane windows to the first floor, beneath hipped dormers with lead finials (one damaged). A corbelled string runs at first floor level and beneath the eaves, complemented by corbelled, plinthed brick chimneys at each end.

The left wing of the school has gables facing front and to the right, with four lancet windows to the front and a large 16-pane window in an arched recess facing right. A small porch sits in the corner, featuring a lancet window and a framed, diagonally boarded door facing right. The school hall has a pair of lancets, a pair of tall lancets with a roundel above, all beneath a gable, and a small 20th-century flat-roofed extension, considered too prominent, projecting from the corner with the right wing. This wing includes three probably inserted 16-pane windows, a lancet under a dormer gable, and a projecting front gable with stepped 12;15;12-pane lancets. Corbelled eaves and verges are present, along with a plinthed chimney on the ridge of each wing. Five lucarnes are visible on the hall roof, along with two ridge vents. The right end of the school has a 15-pane lancet under a gable, and a gabled arched porch with panelled sidelights and a replaced door. The rear elevation presents an apsidal end to the right wing, mirroring the fenestration and detailing of the front.

The interior includes notable features such as doors typical of Douglas's detailing, and exposed queen post and king post trusses.

This school represents one of the first twelve commissions attributed to John Douglas, from a total of approximately 650 dating between 1860 and 1911. Its design reflects Douglas’s early training in the office of Edward Paley.