North Western Block at the British School is a Grade II listed building in the North Hertfordshire local planning authority area, England. First listed on 6 June 1975. School.
North Western Block at the British School
- WRENN ID
- hushed-soffit-hyssop
- Grade
- II
- Local Planning Authority
- North Hertfordshire
- Constituency
- Hitchin MP: Alistair Strathern (Lab)
- Country
- England
- Date first listed
- 6 June 1975
- Type
- School
- Address
- North Western Block at the British School, Queen Street
- OS grid reference
- TL 186 288
- Coordinates
- 51.94582, -0.2756
- Source
- Historic England listing
Description
The North Western Block at the British School is a former girls and infants school built between 1857 and 1858. It is constructed of red brick in Flemish bond with a Welsh slate roof. The building is two stories tall and features three rows of twelve bays in a dignified classical style.
The façade includes a first-floor band and a modillion brick cornice. The road elevation has an open pediment with a date stone and a circular window in the tympanum. There are three narrow round-arched windows on the first floor, each with 10-pane sash windows and key blocks. On the ground floor, there is a central projection with two stone steps leading up to a six-panel double door, which is topped by a fanlight and set within a keyed round arch. Flanking this door are six-pane sash windows, and there is an entablature above.
The right return of the building has a configuration of four, three, and five bays, with the center slightly projecting and pedimented. The central doorway features a bracketed cornice, with an additional doorway on the right. The windows are predominantly 16-pane sashes, with 12-pane sashes in the center and a 12-pane sash flanked by 8-pane sashes on the first floor of the center.
Historically, this building is part of a school that was originally founded in 1810 by William Wiltshire, a lawyer from Hitchin.
Local climate
North Western Block at the British School sits in a drier-than-average part of the UK, with an average of 720 mm of rain a year. This makes it drier than 82% of listed buildings in the UK. Its exposure to wind-driven rain is lower than that of 76% of listed buildings.
It experiences an average of 35 freeze-thaw cycles a year, more than 60% of listed buildings. Of these, 17 follow at least 1 mm of rain in the preceding 48 hours. Average temperatures at this location have risen by 0.3°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.
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- No EPC on record for this property
- No sale records on file
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- 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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