Former Free School

The building is a former Free School, dating from the 19th century. It is constructed of red brick in Flemish bond on the front elevation, with buff brick dressings imitating stone. The sides and rear are red brick in English garden wall bond. Slate roofs top the structure.

The building comprises a central, double-pile block beneath a nearly pyramidal roof that falls from a central stack. This central block contains front and rear ground floor reception rooms and principal first floor bedrooms. Flanking the central block and set slightly back are entrance stair halls, which extend to the rear as wider, two-storey, gabled service wings.

The front elevation features a central block of four evenly spaced bays. The first floor has 3-over-6 hornless sash windows set within chamfered architraves formed with buff bricks. The ground floor windows are slightly taller, with a 6-over-6 configuration. Buff bricks are used to imitate rusticated quoins. A simple eaves band runs along the top, extending to a parapet above the flanking entrance bays, which have four-panel doors with semicircular fanlights. Above those doors are single, 6-pane casement windows with central mullions on the first floor. The side elevations include a tall, round-headed hornless-sash stair window, with a small circular window to the west. A backdoor, used as a tradesmen’s entrance, provides access to the kitchen. The rear elevations retain two first floor, 8-over-8 hornless sash windows on the central block, though their mouldings differ from other sash windows. Some ground floor windows have been replaced; one has French doors. Most other rear windows have been altered.

The principal staircase in each house has a mahogany handrail that is ramped and wreathed, set on turned balusters rising from a curtail step with an ornamented cast iron baluster. Internal doors are four-panelled; some in No. 13 were overboarded. Each house retains an identical cast iron bedroom fireplace incorporating an ornamental frieze below the mantle. Other fireplaces are later replacements, although one in No. 15 may retain an original marble surround/mantelpiece. Other original features include joinery and plasterwork. It is reported that tie beams in the roof structure of No. 15 are planed and moulded, suggesting they were originally intended to be visible, potentially as part of an open roof structure typical of 19th century school buildings.