Highgate School, Old School Building

This is a public school building, now the principal hall for Highgate School, constructed between 1865 and 1877 by Frederick Pepys Cockerell for the Reverend Dr. Dyne, the school’s headmaster. The building is of red brick with stone dressings and decorations, and has a slate roof with stacks on the gable and rear elevation.

The symmetrical design features a five-bay first-floor hall, with a projecting dias at one end, now used as a stage, and an oriel window at the opposite end, accessed by external stairs. A central external imperial stairway was added in 1949 as a war memorial. The ground-floor classrooms are not of particular architectural interest.

The main facade has a central gable and a sundial inscribed 'Vera Loqui aut Silere' above three relief panels. A lead parapet is inscribed 'R S 1565'. The windows are mullion and transom style, with leaded lights and trefoil heads under flat arches. A band of shields runs along the first-floor level. A projecting stone oriel, supported on a single column, projects forward of a vaulted undercroft, which was originally open but was later imaginatively infilled by James Cubitt and Partners. Original entrance steps to the south lead under a projecting porch with fine foliate carving.

The north elevation continues the band of shields, with rose windows above some blocked windows containing stained glass. The rear elevation includes a projecting wing at the stage end over the undercroft, and otherwise is a five-bay composition. It features simplified mullion and transom fenestration, dominated by a massive central stack flush with the elevation, with decorative brick detailing reflecting the fenestration pattern, and projecting buttresses between ground-floor windows.

The interior hall has an exposed timber-truss roof. A proscenium and stage were constructed in 1933 and panelling, donated in 1934 by Edward Jeudwine and commemorated in a central panel, was added. Further panelling, contemporary with the central entrance, is believed to have been added in 1949.

Highgate School was founded in 1565, and this building commemorates its expansion and reform on the original site, starting in 1845 under the direction of the Reverend Dr. Dyne.