Blithfield House

BLITHFIELD HOUSE is a former school and schoolmaster’s house, now a village hall, constructed between 1856 and 1857. It was designed by G.E. Street. The building is primarily red brick with ashlar dressings, and has slate and fishscale tile roofs with crested ridge tiles, as well as brick off-ridge stacks with octagonal shafts. It is built in the Tudor Gothic style, with the school room aligned north-south, the schoolmaster’s house to the south-east, and an attached yard to the east.

The west elevation has the school room to the left and a set-back gable of the schoolmaster’s house to the right, with a 3:1 bay arrangement. The school room features cross windows with chamfered mullions and transoms, and straight fillet moulded dripstones. A gabled dormer is positioned to the left, with a 3-light, chamfered mullioned window. There are two buttresses to the right of centre, and one to the left, with a belfry and lead-covered spirelet on the right. The schoolmaster’s house has a latticed casement window on the ground floor to the right.

The south elevation has the set-back gable of the schoolroom to the left, and the schoolmaster’s house to the right. The school room has a 6-light, mullioned and transomed window with a relieving arch and straight dripstone. The schoolmaster’s house consists of two storeys and is roughly 2:1 bays, with a projecting gabled wing to the right and a main range to the left. The main range has cross windows to the ground and first floors on the left, with a gable above the first-floor window. A small window is located on the first floor to the right. A segmental pointed door is on the right. The gabled wing has a 6-light, mullioned and transomed ground-floor window, and a cross window above.