Former Board School and outbuilding to north

Former Board School and Outbuilding to North

This is a former Board School built in 1871–1872, very probably to the designs of Henry Clutton. The building is constructed of roughly dressed limestone laid to courses with ashlared dressings, under a roof covering of plain clay tiles.

The school faces south and has a long rectangular plan with a parallel outbuilding to the rear (north). The single-storey school is designed in a simplified Tudor style, characterised by large chimneys and expansive windows. It is double-height under a pitched roof with a moulded eaves cornice and parapets surmounted by ball finials, and prominent moulded kneelers supported by cavetto-moulded corbels. The building has a plinth and a platband, also with cavetto moulding, which runs across the façade and return walls at sill level, rising over the three doors to form their frames.

The fenestration consists of deeply recessed sash windows without glazing bars, which from the outside appear as stone mullioned and transomed windows with simple projecting stone lintels. The façade is dominated by two tapered, projecting chimneys with wide bases of roughly dressed stone, rising into tall square ashlared stacks. The left chimney is flanked by large eight-pane windows lighting the large schoolroom, and the right chimney by vertical two-pane windows lighting the smaller classroom. Three doors provide access: a plank and batten door is located off-centre between the large and small windows, and two-panel doors with an upper glazed panel are located in the single-storey flat-roofed bays on each gable end. The return walls of these bays are lit by two deeply recessed single windows in moulded stone frames with fixed lights and top-opening casements. The gable ends are lit by two large six-light windows and an oculus in the gable head. The left (west) gable end retains the school bell, although mounted on a replacement bracket. The rear elevation of the single-storey bays and the ground floor of the main school range are built of roughly textured brown and red brick laid in English bond.

At the rear of the school is a single-storey outbuilding, also in rubble stone with ashlared dressings, under a hipped tile-clad roof with exposed rafter feet. A tall stone chimney rises through the ridge on the right (west) hand side, above the former boiler room. A centrally placed plank and batten door with long strap hinges is flanked by two long horizontal windows with louvred openings lighting the WCs. The gable ends have three-light mullion windows in prominent frames which rise above the eaves. Blind stone walls are attached to the corners of the outbuilding, curving round to the single-storey bays on the school building and forming small enclosed areas. The linear space between the outbuilding and the school has been covered over to form an internal corridor.

Interior

The main range contains a large principal schoolroom at the west end and a classroom at the east end, both double-height and retaining many historic features. Both rooms have original wooden floorboards and wooden moulded cornicing. The ceiling in the schoolroom is divided into five sections by wooden ribs with roll-moulding, and that in the classroom into two sections. Both rooms are lined with panelling covering the lower half of the walls, consisting of vertical lower panels and rectangular panels above with chamfered edges. The panelling in the schoolroom is painted white, and that in the classroom is stained. The latter is said to have been installed in the last thirty years but, if so, it is a very accurate reproduction and appears original. The original doors survive with lower panels of vertical planks. Both rooms retain very large fireplaces on the south wall, with simple stone surrounds and insets (now painted), depressed arch openings (now blocked), and stone hearths. In the schoolroom, an opening has been made in the west wall as a hatch to the kitchen.

The single-storey bays on each side have partition walls with upper glazed panels; that to the east is used as a store cupboard, and that to the west has been fitted out as a kitchen in one half. The other half retains some coat hooks, which may be original.

The outbuilding has been subject to alterations. On what was originally the external south wall (now internal since the covered corridor was created), all doors have been replaced. Modern WC facilities have been installed, and the wall around the former boiler room has been partly rebuilt in concrete breeze blocks.