1 and 2 School House

1 and 2 School House

This Grade II listed building comprises a former school room with an attached school teacher's house, constructed of gault brick laid mostly in Flemish bond with stone dressings and gable roofs with slate coverings. The building employs a compact double-pile plan, with the school room facing the road to the north-east and the teacher's dwelling to the rear with its principal elevation facing north-west. A stone date of 1843 marks the construction.

The school room is fronted by a flat-roofed central porch with a plain rendered frieze. The porch features a prominent date stone carved with 1843 at its centre, beneath which sits a dividing buttress. Either side of this are partially blocked lancet windows with Tudor-arch heads and 20th-century casements. The main entrance openings on the north-west and south-east sides of the porch both retain their Tudor-arch stone dressings; the north-west opening preserves a panelled door with inserted glazes and original door furniture, while the south-east entrance has been partially filled with brick and render supporting a 20th-century casement. The school room's flanking elevations feature rectangular windows with straight segmented brick heads. The steep gable ends have prominent stone copings and shoulders supported by moulded stone corbels; the gable-end windows retain carved stone hooded drip-moulds though the openings have been partially filled for 20th-century fenestration. An end stack rises at the north-west gable.

The single-storey school teacher's house is subservient in height and has a central ridge stack. Its principal north-west elevation displays a diamond leaded-light casement window with a carved stone hooded drip-mould and decorative timber barge board in the gable. A small single-storey wing to the south-east contains the kitchen and coal shed. The house connects to the school room via a recessed lobby beneath a pent roof, from which both the main house entrance and the teacher's side entrance to the school room are accessed; both retain contemporary panelled doors with some original furniture. The south-west elevation facing the former garden has one diamond leaded-light casement window; the wing has a 20th-century casement and a replaced plank back door, with a coal shed featuring a 19th-century plank door to the right. The rear elevations facing the courtyard are plain, with door openings visible from the school room and an external chimney stack attached to the second room of the house.

At the south-west boundary stands an enclosing wall containing a small central courtyard, with a range of small outbuildings with pent roofs and plank doors attached to its interior.

The school room interior retains its queen post roof truss. The sliding door mechanism and central opening that once divided the room into two separate teaching areas can be discerned above an inserted ceiling but does not survive at lower level. Original panelled and plank doors remain, and the former entrance porch retains a quarry tile floor covering; most other fixtures and fittings are of late 20th-century date.

The school teacher's house retains its original plan-form. The fireplace from the main room accessed from the lobby is in storage but is described as cast-iron with tiled decoration. The fireplaces in the two smaller rooms have plain timber surrounds with grate openings infilled with brick. Contemporary cupboards, picture rails, plank doors and door furniture remain. The kitchen wing contains a butler's sink.