Otley Westgate First School Eastern Block (Original School) With Playground Wall To Front And Side

Otley Westgate First School is a mill school built in 1871 for Messrs Duncan, the mill owners. The building features rock-faced stone and a Welsh slate roof, designed in the Gothic style. It is a single-storey structure with nine bays, where the two left bays project as a gabled wing. This wing includes a gabled porch on the right, which has diagonal buttresses and steps leading up to a six-panel double door with a fan-light in a pointed-arched surround supported by colonnettes. To the left of the porch, there is a window with three triangular-headed lights, also featuring colonnettes and a relieving arch. The gable of the wing has a sexfoiled oculus.

The remaining part of the building follows a rhythmic pattern of bays, alternating between 'a' and 'b' types. The 'a' bays each contain a window with two segmental-arched lights and a colonnette, while the 'b' bays are gabled and feature pointed-arched windows with two cusped lights, a colonnette, and a sexfoil above. All gables are adorned with kneelers, roll-moulded coping, and leafy finials. The roof has crested ridge tiles, some of which are broken, and remnants of two ridge louvres.

At the rear, a short wing projects on the right, with windows of two triangular-headed lights in bays one, two, six, and seven. A gabled range has been added to bays four and five, and between this and bay three, there is an eaves stack with two small slate louvred pointed-arched openings at the base. The right return features a window with two cusped lights and a sexfoil above, while the left return has four bays with windows similar to those at the rear, separated by buttresses.

In front of the school, there is a tall wall with chamfered coping that supports railings with a decorative base band and alternately plain and moulded finials. The wall has wide, intermediate stone piers and returns on the left as a tall wall between the school and an alley.