Queen Mary School

Queen Mary School

Secondary school, built in 1930 with mid-20th-century alterations and late-20th-century additions. Designed by architects Thomas Taliesin Rees and Richard Holt. Constructed in red brick and ashlar sandstone with sandstone dressings and Westmorland slate roof coverings laid to diminishing courses.

The building follows a double quadrangular plan set behind a long frontage elevation, with a lower parallel rear range enclosing the courtyards.

The north-facing entrance front comprises a long two-storey range with a central three-bay entrance set within a balustraded portico. The portico features giant Corinthian columns, and below them sits a moulded doorcase topped by a broken segmental pediment. Behind the balustrade rises a hipped roof with a cupola and weathervane. The flanking twelve-bay ranges have glazing bar sashes to the tall first-floor windows and smaller square ground-floor openings. Paired pilasters mark the corners, with a moulded cornice gutter running along the elevation. These ranges connect to advanced single-storey pavilion wings with pilastered corners, tall side wall windows, and hipped roofs. The left wing formerly served as a library and the right wing as a kitchen with stack.

The rear elevation is a long single-storey range with hipped roofs and multi-pane windows in plain surrounds. Set-back bays at either end were extended in near-matching style, and the original range contains hopper heads dated 1930. The front and rear ranges are linked by ranges enclosing the outer sides of the two quadrangles, originally single-storey but with an added storey on the east side, and connected at the centre by the galleried assembly hall.

The interior retains an extensively undisturbed original plan with original door and window joinery throughout most of the complex. Full-length corridors in both the front and rear ranges connect the central entrance hall to all other ranges. Twin flanking stairs with cast-iron balusters provide access to the upper-floor corridor serving the frontage range and to the assembly hall gallery. The hall features a raised stage at its south end, tiered gallery seating, and a segmental vaulted roof with moulded plaster panels. The ground-floor cloakrooms, formerly designated for junior and senior pupils, retain their original cast-iron columns, numbered pegs, and accompanying benches.

The Queen Mary School for Girls was completed in 1930, two years after the extension of suffrage to women in 1928. The school was funded by the Lytham Schools Foundation, which originated in 1702 when the Clerk of Lytham, Mr Threllfall, gave £5 for the schooling of poor children. The comparable boys' school at Lytham had been completed in 1906.

The building represents an extensively little-altered secondary school in carefully detailed neo-Georgian style, demonstrating the commitment to contemporary educational provision of the ambitious and expanding local authority at Lytham St Annes. It has been described as an "undiluted" example of the genre and is numbered among the finest schools of its kind. The school was designed and finished to a high specification in both external materials and internal finishes.