Ladypool Primary School

Ladypool Primary School

A school built in 1885 by the architects Martin and Chamberlain for the Birmingham School Board. The building is constructed of red brick with steeply-pitched tiled roofs featuring decorative ridge tiles, moulded brick stacks, and painted bargeboards. It is embellished with terracotta, polychromatic plasterwork and mosaic. Most of the timber windows in the older parts appear to be original.

The historic structure comprises two rectangular blocks set at right angles to each other: the larger block (junior school) oriented north-west to south-east, and the smaller block (infant school) oriented south-west to north-east. Their junction creates an entrance courtyard facing south-east. Each block is arranged with classrooms around a central hall. An attached caretaker's house stands beside the main gates, opening onto the entrance courtyard. Small extensions have been made to the original building, with a large extension constructed in the late twentieth century positioned to the south-west of the site and largely detached from the main structure.

All external facades are irregular, composed of gables of varying heights with corresponding variety in window forms and decorative treatment. The richest decoration is concentrated at the angle of the entrance courtyard. The entrance comprises a glazed arcade of oriental inspiration, its upper part faced with terracotta. A pair of doors is flanked by windows, with four ogival openings of equal height each surrounded by billet moulding with foliate finials. The arches are separated by quatrefoils containing coloured mosaic foliate designs. The central pier between the doors is an engaged column with a leaf capital. The adjoining double-storey elevation to the north-west features paired double-height lancet window embrasures divided horizontally by terracotta panels with relief mouldings depicting poppies, tulips, primroses, narcissi and bulrushes. This elevation also contains the entrance to the caretaker's house, which has a half-timbered gable with curved bressumer containing diagonally-patterned polychromatic plasterwork and terracotta panels depicting poppies and bulrushes. On the remaining elevations, double-height classrooms are lit by grouped windows echoing the entrance courtyard design: to the south and east are more ornate windows comprising groups of four cusped ogees with quatrefoils containing stained glass, the windows separated by engaged columns; on the west elevation facing the playground are tripartite lancets joined by hood moulds. Gables contain rectangular windows and are decorated with half-timbering, tiles and terracotta in various combinations, surmounted by terracotta apex finials. Dormer windows are located at the south-west corner. Later alterations include a late twentieth-century single-storey extension to the south-west, a modern porch added to the north-west end, a small single-storey extension to the north-west corner of the south-west block, and a first-floor staff room created in the south-west angle between the blocks by breaking through the slopes of one gable and inserting tile-hung flat-roofed dormer projections with new windows.

Internally, the main hall runs along the centre of the north-east block, with the smaller hall occupying the centre of the south-west block. Both halls are spanned by cast-iron blades with pierced decoration forming pointed arches. The north-west end of the larger hall contains a wide decorated Gothic window with original stained glass, into which a small commemorative panel for a late twentieth-century head teacher has been inserted. The window is positioned high to allow for two classrooms occupying the north-west end of the school. The classrooms are also spanned by decorated cast-iron pointed arches. Internal doorways and window openings have segmental or pointed arches. The school retains much original joinery throughout the ground floor, including boarded dado panelling, a staircase with turned newel posts, and doors with chamfered rails and muntins, most glazed; segmental doorways have moulded timber frames, and parquet floors are present. Upstairs, the former headmaster's office retains a stone fire surround with moulded rails. The former caretaker's house has been altered internally but retains panelled doors and a plain stone fire surround.

The school is separated from Stratford Road by original decorative cast iron railings containing trefoil arches on triangular copings with fish-scale mouldings, set on low brick walls. These railings were made by WM Ward & Co of the Limerick Foundry, Tipton.