The Sports Pavilion

The Sports Pavilion

A sports pavilion built in 1899 by James Murgatroyd of Mills and Murgatroyd for Manchester Grammar School. The building is constructed in vernacular style using red brick laid in English Garden Wall bond (3:1) with some stone dressings, a tower with half-timbering to the first floor, and a red tiled roof with deep overhanging eaves. A separate 20th-century toilet block stands to the rear and is not of special interest.

The pavilion has a rectangular plan with a half verandah to the front and a square tower in the south-east corner. The main façade faces west across the playing field and rises to two storeys, with upper storey and attic rooms in the tower. A deep hipped roof with sprocketed eaves is supported on timber columns with Ionic capitals, creating wide eaves that overhang the ground-floor changing room, verandah, and boot-cleaning area in the north-west corner. The main entrance stands to the rear of the verandah, comprising double doors with flanking windows over vertical timber-framing. A changing room projects forward on the north side with a five-light window and side doorway into the boot-cleaning area, which is contained by a brick wall at plinth level with chamfered stone capping. Attic rooms are lit by a wide dormer window with three lights either side of a central clock, with a second dormer to the rear façade. A four-flue stack rises behind the roof ridge. The south side is dominated by the tower, which has a pavilion roof with sprocketed eaves, an original weathervane at its apex, and a tall two-flue chimney stack on its east side.

The ground floor originally contained a large pavilion room, a changing room for the home team and one for visitors, a washroom, and in the tower a caretaker's room with staircase rising to the first floor. An adjacent scullery has a serving hatch through to the pavilion room. The two baths in the washroom have been replaced by showers, but otherwise the layout remains as originally built. The first floor contained originally two bedrooms, now used as additional changing rooms, and a lumber room. The pavilion room features vertical timber-panelled dado, picture rail and moulded cornice. Throughout the building, the majority of doorways retain their original five-panelled doors, and all fireplaces on ground and first floors retain their chimneypieces, two with original fireguards. Original benches and lockers survive, some with clothes hangers over them, as do cupboards.

The building was opened by the Lord Mayor of Manchester on 1 August 1899. It cost £1,125 to construct, with a further £782 spent on draining and preparing the pitches, which required an extensive drainage system as they sit on the floodplain of the nearby River Irwell. The grounds and pavilion were sold to Salford City Council in 1934 when Manchester Grammar School moved to Rusholme, and they continue to be used by local schools.