Church Cottage Former School and School House Parish Room is a Grade II listed building in the South Cambridgeshire local planning authority area, England. School, cottage.
Church Cottage Former School and School House Parish Room
- WRENN ID
- waiting-timber-jay
- Grade
- II
- Local Planning Authority
- South Cambridgeshire
- Constituency
- South Cambridgeshire MP: Pippa Heylings (LD)
- Country
- England
- Type
- School, cottage
- Address
- Church Cottage Former School and School House Parish Room, Church Street, Gamlingay
- OS grid reference
- TL 241 522
- Coordinates
- 52.1549, -0.18652
- Source
- Historic England listing
Description
Church Cottage, formerly a school and schoolhouse, is now a parish room and cottage built in 1848. The building features patterned brickwork, using red brick stretchers and yellow brick headers, with a slate roof and internal stacks. The cottage is two storeys high, with lozenge-shaped leaded lights and ovolo mullions on two first-floor casements, along with a central single light window. On the ground floor, there are two cross-frame leaded light casements on either side of a doorway that leads into a gault brick porch with a four-centred outer arch. The west gable end displays the shield of arms of Clare College, Cambridge, along with the inscription "W.1848".
At the rear, the school room forms a T-plan and shares similar brickwork and a slate roof. It is a single storey with a three-bay west front, featuring a slightly projecting and pedimented central bay. A stone panel inscribed "Gamlingay Schools 1848" is located in the tympanum, flanked by two cross-frame lozenge-shaped leaded lights. The outer bays contain cross-frame casements with three lights.
Inside, the former school room retains a reredos that may have been reset from the Chapel of St Etheldreda in Ely Place, London, or from the chapel in Hatton Garden, Holborn parish. This wooden reredos, originally grey marbled and now painted brown, is arranged in two heights with side panels flanking a pedimented centre piece. The side panels, which are flanked by Corinthian pilasters, feature bolection and fielded panels, with the upper panels having segmental heads. The tympanum of the pediment displays a winged cherub head and garlands of fruit, flowers, and ears of corn, supported by a bracketted central corbel with a floral knot. The design of the reredos bears some resemblance to work by Sir Christopher Wren at Merton College Chapel and in various City churches.
Local climate
Church Cottage Former School and School House Parish Room sits in one of the driest parts of the UK, with an average of 690 mm of rain a year. This makes it drier than 98% of listed buildings in the UK. Its exposure to wind-driven rain is lower than that of 89% of listed buildings.
It experiences an average of 33 freeze-thaw cycles a year, fewer than 55% of listed buildings. Of these, 15 follow at least 1 mm of rain in the preceding 48 hours. Average temperatures at this location have risen by 0.4°C per decade since 1991.
Averages for 1991–2020; temperature trend 1991–2025. Figures describe the wider area (a grid cell of roughly 10 km), not the individual site. Contains modified Copernicus Climate Change Service information 2026.
More on this building
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- No EPC on record for this property
- No sale records on file
- No related consent applications matched
- Detailed attributes — period, style, materials, features
- Flood risk assessment
- Radon risk assessment
- Weather exposure and heating demand — rain and frost month by month and year by year, wind direction, solar and humidity
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