Orwell Park School And Observatory

Orwell Park School and Observatory

Orwell Park School is a substantial educational building constructed in red brick with limestone dressings and slated roofs. The main range comprises seven bays and rises to two and a half storeys, organised on a symmetrical plan with a central entrance leading to an axial corridor from which rooms are accessed.

The north entrance front is designed in the neo-Classical style. It features a projecting three-bay central pediment containing three windows, flanked by blocks of two windows each and bearing a coat of arms. The quoins are of rusticated limestone with curved edges to the projecting alternate stones. The parapets carry moulded stone cornices and corner piers topped with obelisk finials in the Elizabethan manner. Hipped roofs feature red brick chimneys with moulded limestone caps. The sash windows are set within flat, gauged brick arches, some retaining small panes. A set-forward single-storey loggia of multiple bays extends along the entrance front, with flat pilasters supporting a cornice. To the left of the entrance it is infilled with windows; to the right with brickwork and pierced limestone balustrading. A projecting integral open entrance porch has Doric columns and a pair of four-panelled doors. A three-storey service wing adjoins the main range to the left.

The garden front presents a long facade of linked units, each with balustrading matching that of the entrance front. From left to right these comprise: a single-storey stone-faced conservatory of seven bays; a single-storey assembly hall with canted bay window; a three-storey five-bay main block whose windows are framed and linked vertically by stone pilasters and panels; and a seven-bay two-storey block with canted stone-faced bay windows. Beyond stands the octagonal observatory (described below) and the service range. Pierced strapwork enrichment in the 17th-century manner adorns the areas above each upper window along the garden front.

The interior of the main school building was not fully inspected. The colonnaded entrance hall has a cornice with triglyphs interspersed with oak leaves and supported on caprine heads and roundels. The chimney piece features a plastered overmantle with foliate and acanthus motifs. Niches occupy the right-hand and rear walls. The panelled dining room is said to contain rich plasterwork. The headteacher's room has a classical marble fireplace carved with mythological creatures, shutters to the windows and egg and dart cornices.

Observatory

The octagonal observatory tower stands to three storeys on a concrete base 1.2 metres thick in the basement, extending 75 centimetres beyond the outer walls. The brick-built octagonal tower has stone dressings. On the garden elevation, sash windows are arched on the ground floor and rectangular on the first floor with scroll decoration at their heads. At the second floor the tower is reduced in diameter and carries an external stone balustrade buttressed at the corners by massive ramped scrolls of limestone. The third floor houses the domed equatorial room. Five arched windows with splayed cills and stone pediments surmount the dome, which is constructed with a wrought-iron framework covered in deal and clad with copper. The north elevation includes an external stair tower to the west and additional rooms to the east, with Tomline's added lift shaft between them.

The interior rises from a circular brick pier in the basement that extends 18 metres above the foundations. This pier is encircled by an independent brick wall and supports a 2-metre diameter York stone disc, 30 centimetres thick, which serves as the anchor point for the telescope mount. This arrangement isolates the telescope from vibrations caused by people moving within the building.

The ground floor originally functioned as a Turkish Bath, comprising two hot rooms to the east (heated by a furnace in the basement) and a central octagonal frigidarium. The space is now the Bursar's Office, with most fixtures removed save for a marble seat in one former hot room and column supports in the frigidarium.

Above the ground floor, a winding cantilevered concrete stair in an integral tower provides access. The lift interior on the north elevation is believed to remain intact. A storage room occupies the first floor. The second floor forms a belvedere currently used for exhibition space, featuring curved timber doors and curved glass windows. The third floor contains the equatorial room where the telescope is mounted atop the circular brick pier. The dome interior is lined with polished mahogany planking fixed with brass screws; it rotates on twelve removable wheel sets inset within the external wall and opens via a wheeled mechanism. A small transit chamber adjoins the equatorial room, equipped with a 75-millimetre aperture Troughton and Simms transit instrument. A sidereal clock made by Dent & Co., positioned for ease of reading against the transit chamber wall in line with the two piers of the transit instrument, was installed by Airy.

The Tomline Refractor is an equatorially mounted refractor with a clear aperture of 258 millimetres and a focal length of 3,890 millimetres (focal ratio f15). Its mount takes an innovative bent-cone form, eliminating fouling of the northernmost support column when tracking circumpolar stars, a problem common to mounted telescopes. The instrument was fitted with large setting circles, and periscopes allowed the observer to read the declination setting circle from the eyepiece end. A weight-driven clockwork mechanism originally powered the instrument, with counterweights hung on chains in the cavity between the brick pier and the circular observatory wall. The power source is now electrical.