Stone Grange

Stone Grange

Originally a school building, now a house. Dated 1631, though possibly slightly earlier, built for Shrewsbury School with mid-to-late 19th-century alterations and additions. Constructed in yellow and grey Grinshill sandstone ashlar with a machine tile roof.

The building is two storeys and attic over basement to the left. It features a chamfered plinth, moulded string course, parapeted gable ends with coping, and two gabled dormers to the front, each with 2-light wooden casements. Four integral stone corner stacks with 19th-century cornices and shafts rise from the building, with a central lateral stone stack at the rear.

The windows are double-chamfered stone mullioned and transomed types. The first-floor arrangement consists of 3:2:3:2:3 lights, while the ground floor has 4:4:2:4 lights. Two blocked 2-light basement windows appear to the left. Two 19th-century stone porches occupy the space between the first and second windows and between the third and fourth windows, the right-hand porch being the larger. Each porch has a boarded door and is flanked by Doric pilaster strips supporting sections of frieze and full cornice. A parapet with globe finials at the corners and a stepped raised centre with gabled top completes each porch, with chamfered lancets in the returns. The left-hand porch displays a carved shield dated "AD 1631" above the door, and the right-hand porch also bears a carved shield. Behind each porch stands a nail-studded boarded door with chamfered reveals; the left-hand door is probably 17th-century with strap hinges and a blocked overlight.

The right-hand return front features pairs of 4-light windows at first-floor and attic level, those on the first floor having dripmoulds, and two ground-floor 3-light windows. The left-hand return front similarly shows pairs of 4-light windows at first-floor and attic level with dripmoulds at first-floor level. The ground floor here has two 3-light windows flanking a small central 1-light window, with a string course stepped up over all three as a hoodmould. Three blocked basement windows are also present on this elevation.

The rear elevation displays four first-floor 3-light windows and a ground-floor cross window positioned off-centre to the left. A former 3-light window off-centre to the right was cut down in the late 20th century to form French casements, with a string course stepped up over it as a hoodmould. A later gabled service wing extends to the south-west.

Internally, the building retains heavily-built ceiling frames with large chamfered and stopped beams. A mutilated 17th-century chamfered Tudor-arched stone fireplace survives in the right-hand ground-floor room at the rear, and a 17th-century fireplace with chamfered reveals and moulded lintel occupies the left-hand ground-floor rear room. Heavily-built square-panelled timber-framed internal partition walls divide the interior. A blocked doorway exists between the left-hand ground-floor corridor and the left-hand room, and a chamfered doorway appears in the left-hand rear bedroom. The roof structure comprises seven bays with collar and tie-beam trusses incorporating raking struts and pairs of purlins with wind braces.

Shrewsbury School acquired or built Stone Grange in 1617 as a refuge from plague. The justification for the 1631 date inscribed on one of the 19th-century porches is unclear, though part of the school buildings in Shrewsbury itself date from 1627-30. It is possible the land was purchased in 1617 and the present building erected a few years afterwards.

The 19th-century porches likely mark the former division between masters and pupils, with each door leading onto a corridor to either side of a central hall containing smaller rooms facing outward. Beyond the porches, late 19th-century alterations included refenestration, with the outer ground-floor windows being enlarged from their original small, high-up 2-light casements (themselves 19th-century insertions cut through the original 17th-century plinth), and the insertion of a second first-floor window from the right, with the blocking of a former mezzanine staircase window below it. A late 18th-century or early 19th-century print (a copy of which was kept in the house at the time of the 1985 survey) documents the former arrangement.

Schoolboy carved graffiti appears on the left-hand gable end wall, including the date "1886", with some markings appearing to predate this (though illegible at the time of survey).