Nottingham High School

Nottingham High School is a boys’ high school built between 1866 and 1867, with a basement excavated in 1870 and the 1880s. The design was by T Simpson, assisted by Hine & Evans of Nottingham. Constructed in the Elizabethan Revival style, the school is ashlar with ashlar dressings and slate roofs.

The exterior features a plinth, string courses, buttresses with pinnacles, coped parapets. Windows are primarily leaded casements with stone mullions and tracery, under label moulds. The building is single-storey and two storeys high, plus a basement, with a 5:3:5 bay arrangement. A central block is topped with a tower, flanked by wings. The projecting central block includes a Y-plan stairway with double doors leading to the basement. The ground floor features a pointed arched double door with traceried spandrels, a niche, and a pinnacle above. Flanking this are canted bay windows, 7-lights, rising from the basement, above which are smaller windows of 3-lights. The upper stage is set back, with a slightly projecting centre and three 3-light windows. Above this is a set-back square tower, featuring a crenellated parapet and a tall crenellated corner turret, with projecting 3-light windows on each side. The left wing is single storey plus basement, with a slightly projecting central bay containing a 5-light window, flanked by two 3-light windows. The basement has cross-mullioned windows, 4 and 3-lights. The right wing is two storeys plus basement, with similar fenestration but simpler tracery.

The interior entrance hall features three roll-moulded pointed arched doors leading to the main entrance and flanking rooms. The left room has wainscot, a moulded cornice, and a pointed arch to the bay window. A cusped arch leads to a corridor to the left wing. The first-floor library in the left wing, altered circa 1986, has a hammer beam roof with wall shafts and angel corbels, and three blind pointed arches at the west end. A first-floor room in the right wing, altered circa 1955, has a scissor-braced roof with wall shafts and corbels. A traceried 5-light window at the east end was altered and blocked, while a similar window at the west end was altered to form a screen and doors.