Parkside School

Parkside School

A secondary school designed in 1909 by A.V. Rowe, with G.H. Gadd as executant architect, and opened in April 1912. The building has undergone later twentieth-century additions and alterations.

The structure is built of red brick with ashlar dressings and a plain tiled roof. It comprises two storeys with an attic and basement. The principal facade, facing Stourbridge Road, is designed in an Edwardian Baroque style.

The principal entrance front extends across twenty-one bays in a symmetrical arrangement. All windows are sashes with keystones; those on the ground floor have cambered heads, while first-floor windows have straight heads. Two gabled projections, each of three bays, project between the fifth and seventh bays and between the fifteenth and seventeenth bays. These projections feature quoins at the corners, with the ground and first-floor windows of each central bay unified under a large-scale aedicular surround. The first-floor windows of these projections have arched tops that project into the gable, with an oculus at the gable apex set in a richly moulded cartouche. The central bay contains a frontispiece with channelled rustication and triple keystones to the arched door and window openings. Above this, on the ridge, sits a timber and lead bellcote with louvred side openings and miniature pediments. A prominent bracketed cornice runs along the front, forming an arched pediment over large central arched windows and continuing beneath the gables on either side.

To either side of this lengthy facade are two-bay blocks with hipped roofs, added in the first half of the twentieth century and positioned on line with the main facade. Single-storey link corridors connect these wings to the side doors of the main block; changing rooms were added to the road flanks of these corridors in the later twentieth century. Beyond these are two free-standing bike sheds of red brick in garden wall bond with pantile roofs, each with four bays to their inner faces divided by Tuscan pillars. These also appear to date from the first half of the twentieth century.

The rear of the building features four prominent arched windows at first-floor level at the centre, lighting the library. Shallow wings flank these on either side, with gabled heads and four bays to both ground and first floors; the windows have cambered heads. The gables are fitted with stone dressings and occuli with lattice glazing. Paired staircase windows, falling to mezzanine level, sit beyond these, with keyed occuli below. A school hall is attached at the centre of the rear via a corridor link with arched windows; this appears to have been rebuilt or enlarged in the first half of the twentieth century and has six windows to each flank. A later twentieth-century gymnasium is attached to the west of the hall.

Internally, the principal range features a central spinal corridor on both floors. Dogleg staircases connect the two floors and basement at the north and south ends on the west side. The corridors, staircases and classrooms retain glazed bricks below the dado rail—brown in the corridors and staircases, bottle green in the original classrooms, and sage green in later classrooms. Suspended ceilings have been inserted in several first-floor rooms, though original ceilings survive above them. Many floors are covered with carpet or plastic tiles, but original wood-block floors are exposed in two rooms and likely survive elsewhere. Half-glazed doors remain throughout, though in nearly all cases the upper glazing bars have been removed; original door furniture also survives. Three classrooms retain their original corner cupboards. The boys' changing room preserves its wooden benches, metal shoe lockers and grills, and coat hooks with cast metal numbers.

The school hall retains its herringbone wood-block floor and features a segmental barrel-vaulted ceiling. Projecting pilasters rise from panelled plinths at dado level, dividing the walls into bays and supporting an entablature beneath the coved ceiling. Oak panelling covers the lower body of the walls. The gymnasium and kitchens adjoining the hall to its northern side are of lesser architectural interest.

Historical context: The building occupies a site in Churchfields, near the centre of Bromsgrove close to St. John the Baptist Church. The site was formerly used as a cricket ground. Bromsgrove Secondary School was established in 1905, initially sharing premises with the School of Science and Art and the Bromsgrove Institute, with fifty-four pupils. By 1912, numbers had grown to one hundred, necessitating a purpose-built school. The design was created in 1909 by A. Vernon Rowe, County Advisory Architect, and executed under the supervision of local architect G.H. Gadd. The building was opened by Lady Coventry on 18th April 1912 and operated as a school until its closure in 2008.