Park Grove School

Park Grove School

A Board School, now County Primary School and local education offices, built in 1895 by the architect WH Brierley.

The building is constructed in brown brick laid in English bond on a chamfered brick plinth, with dressings of plain and moulded orange brick. The roofs are of slate, some hipped and some half hexagonal over bay windows, with stone coping and kneelers, brick stacks and lead finials. The building features ornate cast-iron tie rod ends throughout.

The entrance front faces Dudley Street and presents a gabled front of four storeys with an attic, set back between three-storey projecting crosswings. Square towers rise from the junctions of the gable and crosswings; the left tower is truncated, while the right rises as a tall campanile-like chimney with stone cornice and louvred octagonal lantern surmounted by a tapering brick stack. The tall centre range has two half-hipped dormers with sprocketed roofs and tapering finials on each side.

On the ground floor of the gabled front are 3-light windows of two tiers of 6-pane casements beneath moulded stone cornices, separated by a gabled buttress. The upper window consists of 3 pairs of similar lights in 4 tiers with moulded stone sill, set in a round brick arch of 3 orders. In the gable apex is a 2-light attic window in a stone quoined surround flanked by two squat gabled buttresses rising from a sloped attic band. All windows except where otherwise indicated have chamfered brick quoined surrounds with hollow chamfered flat arches of rubbed brick.

Each projecting crosswing has a full-height canted bay on its outer side containing part-glazed double doors approached by flights of steps. Beside the doors and above are paired 2-light windows. In the canted bays on each floor are single-light windows with stone sills (some renewed) and sill bands and cornices of moulded brick. The first floor window cornice is continued as a moulded sillstring to the windows above the doors and across the wing returns. The inner return of each wing has a shallow pent-roofed porch with moulded cornice on carved brackets over boarded double doors.

Other fenestration is scattered, generally comprising 6-pane casements, some of 4 panes, of one, two or three lights with stone sills (some renewed) over moulded brick strings.

The opposite end of the Dudley Street elevation repeats this front arrangement.

The Park Grove front presents a main range of two tall storeys, 15 bays in length. At the right end, a two-storey external boiler house masks the outer return of a wing. At the left end, the outer return of the wing has an external stack corbelled out. The first floor of the main range is articulated by pilasters with moulded capitals on high pedestals rising from a moulded first floor band and supporting a moulded eaves cornice. Windows on both floors are 18-pane sashes in brick quoined surrounds with cambered heads and arches on the ground floor and flat arches on the first floor. The pilasters continue over both returns of the main range, flanking paired 12-pane sashes similarly detailed. All windows have stone sills (some renewed) and moulded brick sillstrings.

The south-west facing Lowther Street front repeats this arrangement with the addition of a one-storey outbuilding behind a ramped-up wall masking the outer return of a wing to the north-west.

The interior has not been fully inspected but appears to be little altered.