Former French Protestant Hospital (later Cardinal Pole School)

Former French Protestant Hospital, later Cardinal Pole School

Hospital and almshouse, later school, built 1864–5 by Robert Lewis Roumieu.

The building is constructed of red and black brick with Bath stone dressings and has a slate roof with lead-covered timber belfries and other ornamental features.

The hospital follows a roughly cruciform plan, with an entrance wing running north-south that bisects a much longer east-west axis. The main stairwell forms the intersection of these two arms. Roumieu's original plans document the functions of the various rooms. On the raised ground floor, the shorter north-south axis contains an entrance hall and steward's office to the south, and the men's day room to the north. A broad galleried corridor runs westward, providing access to the library, committee room and dining hall, with the court room at the far end; a narrow corridor runs eastward, flanked by the women's day room, workroom and lavatories, and terminates in the chapel. The first floor has a similar arrangement, with the north-south range containing the steward's apartment and infirmary. The spine corridors give access to a series of four-bed dormitories for inmates – women to the west, men to the east. The basement contains an extensive complex of utility rooms, accessed separately via a tradesmen's entrance. A spine corridor here connects the kitchen, pantry, larder, scullery, wine and beer cellars, servants' hall, coal cellars, boiler room, and – beneath the chapel – the laundry and mortuary.

The exterior is in the High Victorian Gothic style, described as the strident, "beetle-browed" variety that HS Goodhart-Rendel termed 'rogue architecture'. The design acquires a strong French character through the use of corner turrets and steep pyramidal roofs with swept eaves, creating a châteauesque roofscape. This was originally further embellished with massive corbelled stacks (now truncated), patterned slates (now replaced) and spiky wrought-iron cresting (now mostly lost). The main elevation faces south, where emphasis is placed on the central tower. This contains the main entrance, which is raised and set off-centre to the right within a heavy Gothic surround with four orders of marble shafts and a corbelled and gabled hood. A scroll in French describes the founding of the hospital in 1718 and its transfer to Hackney in 1864; at the apex is an open book inscribed "Sondez les Ecritures" (search the scriptures – John 5:39). Above this, a polygonal bay rises the full height of the tower, terminating in an acutely-pitched roof with deep corbelled eaves, a broach-spired belfry and weathervane perched at the ridge.

The tower is flanked by three-bay wings. The brickwork here displays a strong diaper pattern, which is maintained with variations in other parts of the building. The lower floors have large three-light mullion and transom windows, while the dormitory storeys above have half-dormers with quatrefoil heads and corbelled-out Gothic hoods. Each wing terminates in a projecting bay or turret – the left one polygonal, the right one square but set at 45 degrees to the main elevation and supported on columns below. On the far left, the north-west range has its own symmetrical elevation, with a broad projecting centre bay (lighting the court room) and an elongated wall-shaft that carries an elaborate first-floor oriel bearing a scroll inscribed "Dominus Providebit" (the Lord will provide – Genesis 22:14). On the far right stands the chapel, aligned with the main range but set well back, terminating in a polygonal apse and a small belfry. The vocabulary here shifts from domestic to ecclesiastical Gothic, with offset buttresses and two-light traceried windows. The rear (north) elevation is irregular, with the polygonal right-hand turret (matching that on the south front) and a glazed clerestory and lantern roof over the stairwell as main features.

The interiors are well preserved despite the long and complex history of institutional use, with most room divisions intact and a number of important fittings remaining in place. The entrance hall is floored in a complex pattern of encaustic tiles, which continues up the walls to dado height. A plaque records in English the laying of the foundation stone in March 1864 and the building's completion in April 1865. The hall is overlooked on the west by a stone oriel belonging to the steward's office. To the north, a double archway and flight of steps lead through to the main stair hall, a square top-lit space rising the full height of the interior. The stair itself is complex in form, with separate flights for men and women (reflecting the segregation of the infirmary and dormitories above) and further flights descending into the basement. All have heavy timber balustrades with cast-iron vine-scroll panels. Two secondary staircases with simpler iron balustrades also survive: one in the entrance tower, connecting the various levels of the steward's accommodation, and a servants' stair next to the refectory at the end of the west wing. The ground-floor corridors have tiled floors and patterned brick dados, and the doorways to the principal rooms have Gothic-arched heads with banded voussoirs and polychromatic tiled tympana. Many original boarded and chamfered internal doors remain.

The court room retains its wainscot panelling, inlaid wood floor and decorative plaster ceiling, together with twin fireplaces featuring elaborately-carved stone chimneypieces displaying coloured medallions of Virtues. Elsewhere, most fireplaces have been removed. The committee room has wainscot panelling and a walk-in safe with slate shelving and a wood-grained iron door. The chapel lost most of its stained glass during the Second World War, though the figures and mottoes in the upper lights survive. The pine pews have been removed, but the encaustic tiled floor, west gallery and complex roof with arch-braces and king-posts remain. The roof is supported on outsize, opulently-carved stone corbels. (The present stone altar with its tabernacle and pietà relief was introduced by the Companions of Jesus.) The main feature of the first floor is the gallery in the west corridor, which has a balustrade similar to that of the main stair. The glazed roof above rests on elaborate iron brackets springing from another set of luxuriantly-carved corbels. The basement corridor has a brick-vaulted fireproof ceiling but few other features of note.

The entrance lodge was rebuilt in 1934, as were the adjoining gate-piers. The boundary wall has been largely renewed or demolished, although parts of the original north and south walls remain. These subsidiary structures and the modern school buildings on the site are excluded from the listing.