Shrewsbury School Main Building

The Shrewsbury School Main Building is a school building that was originally Coram's Foundling Hospital, constructed in 1765 by Thomas Farnolls Pritchard. It was adapted between 1878 and 1882 by Sir Arthur Blomfield for use by Shrewsbury School. The building is made of brick and features a Welsh slate roof.

It stands three storeys tall with an attic and has a 13-window range arranged in a 2-3-3-3-2 pattern, with advanced outer and central sections. The design is symmetrical along both axes. The central entrance block consists of three bays, featuring a central pediment above the doorway and rusticated brick quoins. There are paired pilasters on either side of the round-arched doorway, which is topped by a balconette with a balustraded parapet above a tripartite window. The doorway has an enriched segmentally-pedimented entablature. The steep pediment includes an oculus and is flanked by a balustraded parapet.

The windows in the flanking ranges are 20-pane sashes set in moulded architraves, with pedimented heads on the first-floor windows in the central and outer bays, as well as in the centre of the flanking ranges. The advanced outer bays feature hipped roofs, with the parapet continuing across the elevation and dormer windows in the roof, which have alternately segmental and triangular pediments. A copper cupola with a clock sits at the centre of the hipped roof, which is topped with balustrading. There are end wall stacks.

Inside, the building is divided into a series of small, plain rooms, which may reflect its origins as a hospital. Historically, the building served as a foundling hospital until around 1772 and had various subsequent uses, including a woollen factory and an asylum, before being acquired by the school in 1882.