Pye Bank School With Caretakers House And Boundary Wall

Pye Bank School with Caretaker's House and Boundary Wall

This is a board school with an attached caretaker's house and boundary wall, located on the north side of Andover Street in Sheffield. The school was built in 1875 to designs by Innocent & Brown for the Sheffield School Board, with an extension added in 1884 by C. J. Innocent. The caretaker's house was constructed in 1877.

The buildings are constructed of coursed squared stone with ashlar dressings, featuring gabled and hipped slate roofs decorated with ridge tiles and various stacks. The design follows the Gothic Revival style and is arranged in a T-plan formation.

The main school block is two storeys high with a T-shaped plan. It displays a plinth and first-floor sillband, with sillbands to each floor and a ground-floor impost band. Coped gables rise above, with a distinctive shouldered gable stack incorporating two octagonal shafts topped with unusual ogee-shaped pots and a ventilation louvre between them. The projecting centre section features flanking gabled buttresses and a gable with finial. An inscribed and dated band runs between the floors.

The first floor contains a pointed arched recess housing two smaller recesses divided by a shaft, each with a shouldered and transomed double lancet window. Above this is a central quatrefoil with relief carving. The ground floor features a four-bay pointed arched arcade with a central buttress dividing the outer bays by shafts. Each bay contains a two-light window with stone mullion. Below the central windows is a blocked shouldered opening. Beyond these on either side are angled stair turrets in the return angles, each with hipped roof and shouldered transomed window. A further canted projection displays a three-light stone mullioned window, with the right example having a small additional window below and to the right. Beyond this are two shouldered windows with transoms on each side, and below them three narrower cusped-headed windows with transoms. Each gable contains three similar narrow windows, with the central one raised. Each rear corner has a buttress flanked by open cusped archways. The hipped central block displays regular fenestration with transomed windows above and cusped-headed cross casements below. The rear block features similar fenestration with four windows on each side.

The left rear cross-wing has two shouldered windows with transoms, flanked to the left by two similar smaller windows and to the right by a through-eaves dormer with a stone mullioned cross casement, followed by two shouldered transomed windows. Below these are seven large round-arched windows. The right rear wing has two shouldered transomed windows flanked to the right by two smaller cross casements and to the left by a through-eaves dormer with a cross casement. Beyond this are two shouldered transomed windows. Below are two narrow windows flanked by single doors with overlights under a common lintel, with two round-arched windows beyond on either side.

The caretaker's house is in a similar style, facing Fox Street. It is two storeys plus attics and one window wide. The windows are mid-twentieth-century casements. Gabled and hipped slate roofs feature a large rear wall stack, coped gable, and projecting rafter feet. To the left is a two-light window with cusped head on a sillband, and to the right is a single-light window with cusped head, also on a sillband. Above is a cross casement in the gable. Below, a cross casement appears to the left and a door with overlight to the right. At the rear is an adjoining lean-to outbuilding. Caretakers' houses of this design were added to several board schools in 1877 to 1878.

The boundary wall encloses and links the buildings, featuring ramped half-round coping. At the front are five sections of cast-iron railing on a chamfered plinth with square piers and chamfered caps. On either side is a cast-iron gate with square piers and truncated pyramidal caps. Outside the house are two similar sections of railing flanked by single gateways with renewed gates, the left one with square piers with flat caps. Other lengths feature triangular stone coping.

This school is one of several designed by Innocent and Brown for the Sheffield School Board and is amongst the earliest board schools to be built in England following the 1870 Education Act.