Foundry Primary School

Foundry Primary School

This is a red brick building constructed in English bond with stone dressings and a plain tile roof. It comprises two roughly rectangular blocks, each laid out around a central hall. The smaller block houses the Infants' School and is positioned to the south-east of the larger Senior School block.

The Infants' School block has a south front with two gables, the left marking the hall and the right a classroom, with the right wing projecting slightly. Each gable has three joined windows and a further two-light casement to the gable head. The gables feature decorative timber framing with tiled infill formed of differently coloured tiles arranged in chevron patterns, a decorative motif repeated across most gables on the building. The moulded bargeboards are set in projecting tiers and overlap. The western flank has a projecting classroom block built before 1904 with a similar arrangement of windows and gable but without the upper casement window. To its left are two joined gables with paired windows at ground-floor level, and further left is a door and window whose sill has been lowered. The east face has two gabled wings wider than those on the south face, with three-light windows to the gable heads, and to the right and recessed is a further gable with a first-floor window. The north face is masked at ground-floor level by a changing room with brown brick walls added in the 1970s.

The Senior School block has four gabled bays to its east side and the same number to its west side, all featuring timbers and tiles to the gables in the established style. At the northern end of each side is a late twentieth-century brick addition with flat roof; the western block houses a kitchen, while the two-storey block on the east side contains changing rooms and classrooms. The north face has two gabled wings of the established type, flanked by the later twentieth-century additions. The south face has a recessed portion of walling to the right with joined gabled bays behind which is a recessed fluted boiler chimney. To the left is a projecting block added after 1918 with two gabled bays featuring tile hanging to the upper gables.

Internally, both the Infants' School and Senior School blocks have a central hall around which classrooms are grouped. These halls contain cast-iron trusses with cut-out patterns to the sides of the blades: five such trusses in the Senior School hall and three in the Infants' School. The floors are of wood blocks and the dado panelling is of vertical timbers. Doors are largely to the original pattern with glazed upper panels. Windows between the hall and classrooms in the Senior School have pointed arches, while those in the Infants' School have cambered heads. The majority of the classrooms also have a similar central cast-iron truss.

The Caretaker's House has a frontage to Foundry Road with a door at left and a canted bay window with hipped roof at right. The front onto Perrott Street has a blocked window and a sign board frame at ground-floor level and two windows beneath a timber-framed-and-tiled gable at first-floor level. To the left is a prominent chimney stack. Both the north and east fronts have gables with framing and tiles.

To the rear of the caretaker's house is a single bay from one of the former covered playgrounds that were previously placed against the walls of all three walled playgrounds. This has two metal columns to its east front, though the space between, which was formerly open to the playground, is now blocked with brick walling. A small electricity sub-station has been added to the north end, which also has clapboarding inserted to the gable.