St Johns Preparatory School

St. John's Preparatory School

A house, now school, built in 1847 by Augustus Welby Northmore Pugin for the 16th Earl of Shrewsbury. The building is constructed in ashlar with edged herringbone tooling, plain tile roofs with crested ridge tiles, and ashlar ridge stacks with integral end stacks featuring octagonal shafts and crenellated caps.

The design employs a castellated style with Gothic details. The plan is L-shaped, with a chapel attached to the east end to create a T-shaped overall arrangement. Two courtyards lie to the south. The principal alignment runs east-west.

The north front comprises a 3-storey, 5-bay main house to the right and a 2-storey, 3-bay wing to the left, with 4-storey projecting corner towers at each end. The right tower bears a pyramidal spire. Windows are mainly 2-light mullioned openings; the towers contain mainly single-light rectangular loops. The main house features a 2-storey bay window to the right and another to the left of centre. Crenellated parapets run throughout. The chapel is set back to the left of the house.

The south front shows a 3-storey main house with attic on basement, a projecting 4-storey left corner tower, and a 2-storey right porch. A projecting wing attaches to the right, with a single set-back bay at the far right connecting the house to the chapel, which is partly obscured.

The main house features 2 to 4 bays with transomed windows. Ground floor windows have cambered arches; first and second floor windows have flat arches. All windows display trefoil-headed lights. Gabled attic dormers to the principal range contain paired Caernarvon arch lights. The porch has a pointed door under a block stopped hood mould, with a shield above bearing a rampant lion. A first floor window comprises 2 cinquefoil-headed transomed lights beneath a square head. Crenellated parapets extend throughout.

The right-hand wing rises 2 storeys on a basement, spanning approximately 6 bays. The east and west sides contain square-headed transomed windows with cinquefoil-headed lights, except those to the ground floor west, which are 4-centred arch windows of 2 cinquefoil-headed lights. The south gable features a corbelled-out oriel window to the right with a brattished band to a hipped roof, and single-light stair windows to the left. The south-west corner is capped by a turret (Pugin's "look out tower") with pyramidal roof and openings of two 4-centred lights with panelled spandrels.

The chapel comprises a taller 2-bay chancel with semi-octagonal east end and moulded eaves cornice beneath a brightly coloured fishscale tile roof, hipped towards the east. Tall, slim pointed windows of 2 lights contain encircled quatrefoils in the head.

The interior features a rib-vaulted roof with ribs springing from wall shafts supported on corbels carved as angels.

St. John's Preparatory School forms part of an important complex of buildings designed by Pugin for the 16th Earl of Shrewsbury. Its position on the edge of a cliff overlooking the Churnet Valley and its architectural style recall the castles of the Rhine, which may have provided inspiration for the design.