Former Welborne School, now Village Hall

Former Welborne School, now Village Hall

This former school was built in 1847 and has been extended twice: once in the early 20th century and again in the early 21st century. It is now used as a village hall.

The original school is constructed in flint with buff brick quoins, buttresses, stepped coping and chimney stacks. The historic rear extension is built in brick. Both the historic extension and the early 21st-century extension to the north have slate roofs. A copper ventilator sits central to the ridge. The windows are stone mullioned with moulded surrounds, complemented by similar moulding around the pointed arch to the porch.

The building is a three-bay single-storey structure of simple rectangular plan with a projecting porch to the north-west corner and a rectangular extension to the rear. A small early 21st-century extension to the north follows a similar plan. The porch features a gothic pointed-arched opening beneath a slated pitched roof, supported on carved head stops with stepped coping. A clock is positioned within the apex. Diagonal brick-built buttresses support each of the four corners of the original building, although that to the north-east corner has been truncated, presumably during construction of the historic rear extension.

Two sets of four-light horizontally leaded windows with trefoil tracery and hood moulds are positioned to the left of the porch. These windows are replicated on the southern gable, on the rear elevation of the former school, and in the historic extension. The early 21st-century extension has a reproduction two-light window.

Brick-built external stacks with tapering shafts stand at the rear of the school and on the north elevation of the extension. The rear stack has angular brick decoration to the upper courses; the extension stack has dentils. Each gable of the original building has a quatrefoil ventilation brick in the apex. The southern gable features a blank stone inscription panel above the window. The school bell hangs from the northern gable, adjacent to the early 21st-century extension.

The early 21st-century extension is constructed of flint to the front, with a two-light reconstructed mullioned window, and buff brick to the rear with two UPVC windows. The northern gable is accessed externally by a timber panelled door. This extension is excluded from the listing as it has no architectural and historic interest.

Internally, the school comprises four rooms. The main school room, now used as a village hall, is lit on three sides by four mullioned windows, below which wide timber panelling extends around all but the front wall. Parquet flooring survives throughout. An imposing moulded stone fireplace with a stone apron and bottle-green glazed tiles surrounding the grate sits central to the rear wall. The roof space is hidden by an inserted ceiling, but it is understood that the roof structure survives beneath.

In the north-east corner of the hall, a pair of timber panelled and glazed doors open to the kitchen. The kitchen is lit by a stone mullioned window in the south wall and the UPVC window in the gable end. The room is surrounded on three sides by base kitchen units with an emergency exit door inserted into the southern wall. No visible evidence of the fireplace survives.

The early 21st-century extension on the north side of the school room houses the WC, cloakroom and a small storage room. This extension is excluded from the listing as it has no architectural and historic interest.