Grace Dieu Manor Preparatory School

Grace Dieu Manor Preparatory School

A former mansion, now operating as a school, built in 1833–4 by William Railton for Ambrose Lisle March Phillips de Lisle, a prominent promoter of the Catholic Revival. The building was substantially extended by Augustus Welby Northmore Pugin in the 1840s, with alterations to the chapel in 1841, an aisle addition in 1848, and an east wing and stable court gateway added around 1846. The early 1900s saw further alterations for the Booth family, including work by Sir Banister Fletcher. Minor alterations followed in the 1930s and 1940s. Mid-1960s school extensions to the rear are not of special architectural interest.

The building displays colourwash render with stone dressings, Welsh slate roofs to the main house, and Swithland slate roofs to the chapel and east wing. The original block is double pile with a chapel wing to the west, a kitchen wing to the north, and stables enclosing the north side of a courtyard. The stables and kitchen wing have 1930s lean-to extensions, and the courtyard is crossed by early 20th-century covered passages.

The main block, executed in Tudor style, comprises two storeys and an attic with a three-bay south front and two-bay east front. It features a chamfered stone plinth, string courses at floor levels, stone coping to parapets and gables, and windows with hollow-chamfered stone mullions and transoms. Upper lights have four-centred heads and moulded spandrels with wooden glazing bars. Rendered and colourwashed chimneys display groups of tall square, round and octagonal shafts. The south front is dominated by a two-storey rectangular projection to the left with an ashlar front, parapet and three-light windows. The lower window is ovolo-moulded and replaces a former doorway, while a single light occupies the first floor left and left return. The centre bay contains a three-light ground floor window, a canted oriel above with parapet and moulded corbel base, and a single light in a small gable with stepped bases. The right bay is gabled and projecting, with four-light ground floor window, five-light first floor window, and three-light attic window, with two dormers, the left one gabled. The east front has three-light windows and a gabled dormer to the left, and a gabled right bay with a two-storey ashlar bay window.

Beyond stands the Pugin Wing, also of two storeys and attic but more austere in style, featuring a steep roof with stone-coped gable and rectangular rendered chimneys. It displays three bays of three-light windows with chamfered stone mullions; the ground floor and right bay windows include transoms. Two gabled dormers light the upper levels. Between the right bays is a semi-octagonal stair turret with an octagonal pyramid roof and small single lights. At the right end is a shorter narrow bay with cross windows and a 20th-century fire escape to the gable. The rear of the wing has similar windows, cellar openings, and two doors with four-centred heads.

Set back at the left end of the main block is a three-stage water tower with an ashlar top stage, battlemented parapet and traceried wooden bellcote with lead spirelet and weathervane. The south side carries a carved clock-face with sun motif, a two-light transomed window, and an armorial plaque over double doors in a moulded four-centred arch with Tudor hood-mould.

To the left again stands the chapel, featuring offset buttresses and four bays of two-light traceried windows. A four-centred arch is set in a small spur wall at an angle to the left end. The gable end displays a three-light traceried window and an arched door in an ashlar-fronted porch. Beyond are a small tower with an octagonal top, an aisle by Pugin with a three-light traceried window, and a sacristy with two cusped lights, an early 20th-century arched doorway and 20th-century dormers. An arched entry to the courtyard features a hipped roof and de Lisle ciphers on tablets.

Internally, the original parts of the house retain Tudor fireplaces to the ground floor and four-centred passage arches. Some four-panelled doors feature four-centred heads alongside simple panelling. A stone arcade in the entrance hall by Banister Fletcher dates from around 1900. The former entrance hall contains a painting of Saints Thomas of Canterbury and Edward the Confessor. The chapel retains its original roof, floor tiles and glass, though the chancel has been altered. The Pugin aisle features a scissor-braced roof, three-bay arcade, and a fine stone baldacchino by Pugin in Gothic style with traceried gables. Fittings include a cusped piscina, two plaster statues in canopied wooden niches, a screen to the front of the aisle chapel by Pugin, a bell by Pugin, a tabernacle by Pugin, and an Easter Sepulchre in the form of an altar tomb.