Churchfields Kindergarten

HERTFORD

TL3212SE CHURCH PATH 817-1/20/38 (North side) No.9 and Churchfields Kindergarten

GV II

School house and school, former Abel Smith Memorial School for Girls, later All Saints Girls' School, now nursery school 1861, with C20 alterations. Yellow stock brick, Flemish bond, with red brick bands, moulded stone sill band, kneelers, copings and dressings, old tiled roof, with blue roll ridge tiles, stone coped gables left and right, brick chimneys with bands and oversailing courses. School House at left (west), with 4 bay classroom, with projecting gable at right (east). EXTERIOR: single and 2 storeys. House has 4 light stone mullion and transom window on first floor, projecting square bay with mullion and transom window and hipped tiled roof on ground floor, entrance turret at right with 2 light lancet with trefoil heads above stone pointed arch, red brick bands, at intervals, across facade. To right the classroom wing has multi-light chamfered brick reveals, with pebbledashed panels and pointed segmental arches above, with stone kneelers and keyblock and alternating voussoir bands of red and yellow brick. Bay divisions with projecting buttresses with offsets, 3 red brick bands across facade, with splayed projecting plinth at base; projecting gable at right similarly detailed, with a taller narrower window and more red brick bands across gable above. C20 flat roofed extensions to rear. INTERIOR: not inspected. HISTORICAL NOTE: commemorative tablet in gable records that the school was built in memory of Abel Smith of Woodhall Park (1788-1859), who had served Hertford as MP. The school took the girls from the overcrowded Cowper School built 1841 on the London Road. The design of the school shows the influence of model school plans of the period, notably the work of Butterfield published in 1852 in 'Instrumenta Ecclesia'. (Green L: Hertford's Past in Pictures: Ware: 1993-: 132; Page FM: History of Hertford: Hertford: 1993-: 144, 179-80).

Listing NGR: TL3296912482