The School And Schoolhouse

SLEAFORD

697/0/10035 GRANTHAM ROAD 12-DEC-03 17 The School and Schoolhouse

II Former school and school house. 1867 with extension of 1898. By Charles Kirk. Coursed squared stone with ashlar dressings and slate roofs with coped gables and kneelers. Decorative ridge tiles and various stone stacks. Gothic Revival style with stone mullion windows with cusped heads. Single storey with 2-storey school house to rear. School front to Grantham Road has a 6-window range of 2-light windows with buttresses with set-offs between, the centre 3 supporting a projecting stone gable which has an elaborately corbeled gablet with itself supports a stone stack and is also the shelter for the school bell. Below is an inscription panel. There are small dormer gablets towards the apex of the roof. To left is the chapel with lancets and buttresses and a cross finial on the gable. To rear is the school house which has a facing gable to right and a door within a segmental arched doorway and window to left, all under a deep porch formed by the catslide roof. Above is a 2-light gabled dormer with shaped barge boards. The facing gable has a 3-light window with 2-light over and the side of this to right, facing south, has 2 2-light windows with 2 elaborate 2-light dormers over. These are half below the eaves, project slightly and are of ashlar and supported on corbels. Further ranges to right of this front. INTERIOR. Chapel has arched brace roof rising from wall posts and brick corbels. Carved piscina. Main schoolroom is reputed to have a similar roof but has a suspended ceiling at present. This well-designed and finely-detailed school and school house complex is unusual in having, in addition, a dedicated chapel. Charles Kirk, the architect, not only designed the whole but paid for it as well.