Minster Song School (Part)

The Minster Song School (part) is a school building constructed between 1830 and 1833, with later alterations in the late 19th and 20th centuries. Designed by C Watson and JP Pritchett for the Dean and Chapter, it is built of Magnesian limestone ashlar with slate and stone slate roofs, and features ashlar octagonal stacks with coved cornices. The style is Gothick.

The building comprises a two-storey, three-bay central range behind a single-storey, three-bay arcade, flanked by two-storey gabled crosswings, and a one-storey parallel crosswing at the left end. The arcade contains three double-chamfered, four-centred arches, each with a coved head-stopped hood, double doors with diamond latticed, ogee-headed lights, and linenfold panelling. The crosswings have embattled octagonal turrets, moulded and chamfered plinths, and full-height windows with five cinquefoiled lights in double hollow-chamfered surrounds and traceried four-centred heads. A moulded sillstring encircles the turrets. Upper-storey windows consist of paired cinquefoiled lights in square-headed, hollow-chamfered openings with hollow-chamfered mullions, all with coved hoods and return stops. A battlemented parapet with moulded coping runs across the entire building, above a coved eaves string. A one-storey gabled wing has a window of two round-headed lights in a square-headed, double hollow-chamfered opening, with a quatrefoil above.

The rear elevation is two storeys high, with a five-bay front, the end bays gabled, and articulated 1:3:1 by pilaster buttresses surmounted by octagonal turrets with moulded caps; the right end bays are obscured by a one-storey parallel range. First-floor windows in the end bays have three lights with intersecting tracery in four-centred heads; other windows are paired, tripled, or quadrupled lancets with pivoting diamond leaded lights in square-headed, hollow-chamfered surrounds. A moulded string course sits below a coped parapet, crow-stepped in the centre and supporting paired octagonal stacks. A gabled one-storey range has a triple lancet window in a chamfered surround with a four-centred head.

Internally, doorways on the ground floor are four-centred and hollow-chamfered, with some featuring shaped panelled doors. The roof features braced trusses with panel tracery, rising from carved, enriched corbels, and a wallplate carved with blank shields. The building was originally constructed to house St Peter’s School.