Main Building Merchant Taylors School (Boys)

CROSBY

SJ39NW LIVERPOOL ROAD 778-1/3/60 (West side) 26/03/73 Main building, Merchant Taylors School (Boys)

GV II

School. 1878, by Lockwood and Mawson. Red brick in English bond with sandstone and terracotta dressings, graduated green slate roofs with bands of blue slate fishscaling, lead roof to tower. Gothic style. Elongated U-plan with main range centred on tower and long receding wings. EXTERIOR: main range, single storey plus attics, 5+5 windows interrupted by tall tower over central entrance, 2-storey wing to left and high single-storey wing (hall) to right. Plinth with chamfered stone coping, stone sillband. The central tower has a large 2-centred arched doorway with 2 orders of roll-moulding under a coped gablet with carved apex finial, 2 lancets to the second stage, a clockface in a square panel at the 3rd stage, and a large oversailing 4th stage with tourelles, an arcaded 5-light window and embattled parapet, surmounted by a 2-stage louvred lantern with lead-clad pyramidal roofing. The 5-window side ranges each have 2 gabled bays breaking the eaves, with 2-centred arched windows, alternating with 3 square-headed windows, all cross-windows with altered glazing but the arched windows with plate tracery in the heads; and 2 small gabled dormers high in the roof. The left wing, with angle-buttresses and a hipped roof, has a large canted bay window at ground floor with quatrefoil-enriched parapet, and at 1st floor a 2-centred arched 2-light window rising into a gablet. The right-hand wing, also with angle buttresses, has a very large multiple-light canted bay window with quatrefoil frieze and hipped stone slate roof. The left return of the left wing, 8 windows, in an asymmetrical composition, has a gabled porch next to a wide central gable, tall mullion-and-transom windows at ground floor and mostly 2-centred arched windows at 1st floor rising into gablets. The right-hand return of the right wing has six tall 2-centred arched 2-light windows with circular plate tracery. INTERIOR: not inspected. Forms group with associated headmaster's house (qv), entrance lodge (qv) and gateway (qv).

Listing NGR: SJ3212199004