St Marys Hill School, Cottage And Garden And Yard Walls

The building comprises a school, a cottage, and associated garden and yard walls, constructed in 1846. It is built using Flemish bond brown brick with grey slate roofs. The schoolroom features a low sandstone plinth and three renewed casement windows within original, unaltered painted stone surrounds with eared openings. The west gable has a replaced stone-dressed window and kneelers to the brick coping, originally surmounted by a truncated bellcote of corbelled stone. A lower, narrower entrance wing sits to the west, with a framed and boarded door and a four-pane casement, both within painted stone surrounds. The gable end of this wing features a window of three four-pane lights and a cross-loop in the gable. Stone coping is present on the north slope of this gable; a parallel coach house wing adjoins to the north, featuring boarded double doors with a timber lintel, and a hayloft with a boarded loading door, all within painted stone surrounds. The surrounds are splayed and have eared lintels. The cottage forms a short south wing near the east end of the schoolroom. A porch in the corner includes a framed and boarded door on long hinges with a four-pane overlight, all within a painted stone surround, alongside a four-pane, stone-lined casement. A shorter, similar casement sits above, with a gabled dormer featuring stone coping on kneelers. A brick gable chimney has a stone-capped plinth, four divided flues and a corbelled brick cap. The rear yard walls incorporate what is likely medieval coursed sandstone in the lower section of the side walls. A low sandstone wall defines the front garden. The interior of the schoolroom showcases six quasi-hammerbeam trusses and a gallery at the east end with a balustrade. The cottage includes stone steps leading to partially rock-cut brick cellars with quarry floors and a dogleg newel stair with stick balusters. The school and cottage form a well-composed group alongside St Mary’s Centre and the Old Rectory, now County Council Education Offices. The architectural style suggests Thomas Jones as the architect, to whom the adjoining Old Rectory is also attributed.