Ackworth School (That Part Comprising Centre Block East And West Wings Shed Court Main Entrance)

Ackworth School (Centre Block, East and West Wings, Shed Court, Main Entrance)

A foundling hospital built between 1758 and 1773, which became a Quaker residential school from 1778. The building comprises three principal blocks of sandstone ashlar with stone slate roofs, designed by John Watson II and Timothy Lee. The east range was built in 1758, the centre block in 1759–62, and the west range in 1763, with linking colonnaded quadrants added in 1773.

The three main ranges form the sides of a wide forecourt and are all of double-pile plan, two storeys high in Palladian style. Each principal block is symmetrical and comprises 13 bays with a 3-bay pedimented centre that projects slightly. All have hipped roofs with chimney stacks behind the ridges.

The centre block is raised on a low terrace and has a sunk basement with bands on two levels. The main entrance is sunk with a central doorway approached by six splayed steps, fitted with glazed and panelled double doors beneath a pedimented Ionic architrave. The pediment bears the inscription "NON SIBI SED OMNIBUS". Flanking the door are 15-pane sashed windows; the ground floor has tall 12-pane sashes and the first floor shorter 16-pane sashes. An oculus sits in the pediment.

The east and west ranges have their former central pedimented doorways converted to windows, matching the 12-pane sashes on both floors. However, the central windows of each side retain architraves with cornices on consoles, and the first-floor window above the former door has scrolls on the sill and head. Each range displays an oculus in its pediment. Both east and west ranges feature an octagonal cupola with weathervane mounted behind the centre of the ridge to house a turret clock. The east range's cupola is surmounted by a lamb with a sprig of thyme in its mouth. The linking eight-bay quadrants, of two lower storeys, have Tuscan colonnades at ground floor with pilasters and 4-pane sashes above.

On the east side of the east block is a narrow courtyard called Shed Court, enclosed on its east side by a single-storey fourteen-bay colonnaded range. Though formerly open, this range is now glazed, except for a pedimented entrance archway at the centre with impost bands and keystone to both inner and outer entrances, which retains a hipped roof.

The east facade of the east block matches its west facade except that the centre retains double doors of three fielded panels with a six-pane overlight. In the left angle of the projected centre is a rainwater head bearing the raised date "1758".

The interior's principal feature is the reception room in the centre block, known as the Old Library, which follows the conventional plan of a hall in period country houses. It has pedimented architraves to entrance doorways in the front and rear walls. The rear doorway is round-headed with fielded panel double doors and doorcase. Two doorways at each end, all with moulded architraves and cornices and similarly panelled doors—those toward the front segmental-headed—are present. On the chimney breast at each end is a moulded plaster eared architrave to a picture panel. The room features a modillioned cornice and plaster-panelled ceiling.

The building was erected as a branch of the London Foundling Hospital, established by Captain Coram in 1741. The crest of this institution, said to have been designed by Hogarth, surmounts the east range. The foundling hospital closed in 1773. The building was purchased by the Society of Friends in 1778 for £7,000 and opened as a Quaker boarding school in 1779.