Main Building Merchant Taylors School (Boys)

The main building of Merchant Taylors’ School (Boys) is a school building dating from 1878, designed by Lockwood and Mawson. It is constructed of red brick in English bond, with sandstone and terracotta dressings, and has graduated green slate roofs with bands of blue slate fishscaling, and a lead roof to the tower. The building is of Gothic style and is arranged in an elongated U-plan, with a main range centred on a tower and long, receding wings.

The main range is single-storey with attics, featuring five windows plus five windows, interrupted by a tall tower over the central entrance, and a two-storey wing to the left and a high single-storey wing (hall) to the right. The tower has a large, two-centred arched doorway with double orders of roll-moulding under a coped gablet with a carved apex finial, two lancets to the second stage, a clockface in a square panel on the third stage, and a large, oversailing fourth stage with tourelles, an arcaded five-light window, and an embattled parapet surmounted by a two-stage louvred lantern with a lead-clad pyramidal roof. The five-window side ranges each have two gabled bays breaking the eaves, with two-centred arched windows alternating with three square-headed windows. These windows are cross-windows and have altered glazing, though the arched windows retain plate tracery in their heads. There are also two small gabled dormers in the roof. The left wing, with angle-buttresses and a hipped roof, has a large canted bay window at ground floor with a quatrefoil-enriched parapet, and a two-centred arched two-light window rising into a gablet on the first floor. The right-hand wing, also with angle buttresses, has a very large, multiple-light canted bay window with a quatrefoil frieze and a hipped stone slate roof. The left return of the left wing, with eight windows in an asymmetrical composition, presents a gabled porch next to a wide central gable, tall mullion-and-transom windows at ground floor, and mostly two-centred arched windows at first floor rising into gablets. The right-hand return of the right wing has six tall two-centred arched two-light windows with circular plate tracery.

The interior was not inspected. The main building forms a group with the associated headmaster’s house, entrance lodge, and gateway.