Rodley Primary School and attached walls

Rodley Primary School and attached walls is a board school dating from 1877, with an addition circa 1890, designed by Richard Adams. It was built to serve the growing canalside community of Rodley, following the construction of local engineering works and mills, and utilizes the local gritstone.

The building is constructed of coursed squared gritstone and ashlar, with a grey slate roof, and cast-iron railings. It is in the Gothic Revival style. The school consists of a single-story, original four-bay range with a gabled bay on the left, and a longer, projecting gabled wing to the left, likely added slightly later. A round-arched entrance is positioned under a lean-to structure to the far right. The original range features transom and mullion windows with four, two, four, two and five (stepped) lights. The left wing has windows with stepped lights. These windows have distinctive banded mullions and carved ogee and trefoil detail on the lintels, with a moulded string continuing around the building at window-sill level. An added flat-roofed entrance porch sits in the angle between the two ranges and has an eight-panelled door and a moulded parapet. Gable copings are topped with trefoil finials, with a large square stepped stack straddling the ridge to the left of centre and at the end, right, and a ventilator on the ridge of the left wing.

The interior has not been inspected.

Low walls with chamfered stone copings enclose the playground. The roadside wall retains fine railings with alternate knob and trefoil finials. The gate piers have monolithic, square bases, tapering to octagonal sections above, featuring a frieze of trefoil panels and moulded caps with cresting. The gate has lock rails and ornate scrolled infill between bars.

Richard Adams served as architect to the Leeds School Board from 1873-1886, designing approximately 35 schools, of which 16 remained in 1991. This building is a single mixed schoolroom constructed from local stone.