Somerville Primary School

Somerville Primary School is a red brick building laid in English bond with terracotta and rubbed brick dressings, and a late 20th-century plain tile roof. It comprises a mainly single-storey school with two central assembly halls, a two-storey extension to the north-west attached to a caretaker's house, which creates a courtyard between the extension and the north-west elevation of the original school.

The north-east elevation on Somerville Road displays three gables, with the central gable being lower and narrower. Set back from this central gable is an octagonal ventilation tower with a capped top and broached buttresses, designed to serve the 'plenum' system of forced air circulation. To the right is a set-back bay containing a doorway beneath a gable and a single light window. To the left is a single-bay flat roof extension housing the current entrance.

The south-east elevation consists of three pairs of gables. Between the first and second pair is a flat-roof projection with pairs of round-headed windows, a pilaster to the corner with a conical finial, and a double door with fanlight above. Between the first bay of the second and third pairs of gables runs a 20th-century single-storey flat-roof extension. The south-west elevation includes two gables with a single-storey range featuring a slight gabled projection in front. The north-west elevation also displays three pairs of gables with two flat-roof porch projections.

The windows, largely replaced, originally featured an arrangement of two tall lancet windows flanked by two similar but shorter windows, each opening set beneath a rubbed brick ogee arch with finial and terracotta sills. The building retains its dentilled eaves cornice, brick chimney stacks with decorative moulded brick, and a bell-turret with swept pyramidal spire.

The school contains two central halls—the small and large—around which full-height classrooms are grouped. The assembly halls have cast iron trusses with cut-out patterns to the blades: five such trusses to the large hall and three to the small hall. The floors to the halls are of wood block, and some pitch-pine flooring survives in the classrooms. Boarded dado panelling lines the halls and corridors. Panelled doors largely survive throughout, some with glazed upper panels.

The two-storey caretaker's house is linked to the north-west corner of the school via a 20th-century glazed link. The house has an L-shaped plan, a hipped roof with plain tiles and decorative terracotta ridge tiles, and first-floor windows that break through the roof line with gabled roofs. Windows have been replaced. Two chimney stacks with decorative moulded brick remain, along with a moulded brick cill band and dentilled eaves cornice. The interior retains much of its original joinery, including a staircase with curved handrail.

The school is enclosed by a brick boundary wall with gate piers surmounted with terracotta conical finials.