Head'S House At Northways School And Disused Schoolroom Attached On Right

This is a house and attached schoolroom, built in 1847 by J. A. Hansom. The house is constructed from ashlar magnesian limestone with Welsh slate roofs, while the schoolroom is of similar materials.

The house is a two-story building with a half basement, featuring five bays. Attached to the right is a single-story schoolroom, also with five bays. The fourth bay of the schoolroom has a gabled porch and bell-cote projection. The house’s main doorway is located to the left of center, accessed by stone steps with curved side walls that have roll-moulded copings and miniature front-end piers. A later 19th-century gabled ashlar porch encloses a doorway with a chamfered, pointed arch. Canted bay windows flank the entrance, with ashlar surrounds to the basement windows (which have shouldered heads) and the ground-floor windows (which have offsets beneath trefoil-headed openings). Lead-covered hipped roofs top the house. There are five gabled half-dormers on the first floor, each with a shouldered single-light window, except for the first bay, which has a matching two-light window. The end gables are shaped, with ashlar copings, a finial on the right, and a stack on the left. A large, lateral stack on the left return is characterized by offsets and twin octagonal flues. The left return has two basement/ground-floor windows of three shouldered lights. The right return features a glazed quatrefoil above a stepped three-light window, and an apex trefoil. The schoolroom has trefoil-headed four-light windows in bays one through three, and a matching three-light window in bay five. The porch/bell-cote projection in the fourth bay has a pointed arched door under a hoodmould with head-carved stops, an inscribed ribbon, and a trefoiled single-light window above. It has a coped gable from which a bell-cote rises from the left return. A small stair turret is located in the angle between the schoolroom and the house, with a slit window and trefoiled vents beneath an ashlar capping. The returns of the porch, as well as the right end of the schoolroom, have coped gables. The right return of the schoolroom has a window of five trefoiled lights.

The building was originally constructed as St. Edward's Primary School and later became part of a convent. Later additions to the rear, including those to the left of the house and those masking the front-right of the schoolroom, are not considered to be of special interest.