Burnley College With Attached Railings

Burnley College with attached railings is a technical institute, now a college of further education, dating from 1905 to 1909 and designed by GH Pickles. It is constructed with a steel frame clad in coursed sandstone rubble, with freestone dressings and slate roofs, and is executed in a Free Jacobean style.

The building has a large, approximately square plan, comprising a long, storeyed front range and a wide, single-storey rear extension with a north-lights roof, resembling a weaving shed. It is two storeys high over a full basement storey, with a symmetrical facade of 1:3:1:3:1 bays, where the central section and the ends project slightly and are gabled. Features include sillbands, cornices across all floors, semi-octagonal pilasters to the centre and ends, pilasters to the intermediate ranges, steeply pitched coped gables with ball finials, and parapets to the intermediate ranges.

The central entrance has a large round-headed doorway approached by a bridge over the basement area, with a pilastered architrave, panelled frieze, moulded cornice and a swan-neck pediment containing a cartouche surrounded by carved flourishes. The first-floor window above the entrance is a four-light design with pilastered mullions, a frieze displaying the words "TECHNICAL INSTITUTE", and a tympanum filled with carved emblematic figures. The end bays each have 1:2:1 window arrangements; the first floor windows are large mullion-and-transom designs with arched lights, and the second-floor windows have two transoms and semicircular arched heads with keystones. The intermediate ranges also feature similar mullion-and-transom windows, with the centre of the upper floor windows being particularly tall, breaking through the parapet and finished with segmental-arched copings and ball finials. The returned ends are in a similar style. A 20th-century addition is linked by a bridge to the rear.

The entrance hall and staircases are lined with Art Nouveau glazed tiling in blue and green hues. Cast-iron railings, divided into sections by rectangular piers with tapered side supporters, protect the basement area.