Pardes House School

Pardes House School is a former boarding school block, now a primary school, built between 1925 and 1926 by the Middlesex County Architect, HG Crothall. The building is constructed of multi-coloured, load-bearing brick with stone dressings, and the rear facade features windows with red brick flat arches. The roofs are tiled with gabled and hipped sections, behind battlemented parapets, and the parapet to the former main entrance is conical. A western wing includes a part-louvered, copper-clad fleche.

The architectural style is Arts & Crafts inspired Tudor, reflecting an old collegiate aesthetic. The building is in an L-shape.

The exterior is two storeys high. The windows are metal-framed, centrally pivoted, with small panes of glass, and timber frames to the rear. Most windows are separated by capped buttresses, but those on the first floor of the eastern wing are separated by three tall, two-stage chimney stacks. The former main entrance is in an octagonal bay set at the angle of the “L”, featuring a moulded segmental arch with carved enrichment surmounted by an heraldic plaque under a hoodmould. It has recessed panelled and part-glazed doors, flanked by two-light transom and mullion windows with three-light windows above. The western wing has three-light, double-height transom and mullion windows, and a north-western Gothic tracery window flanked by buttresses accentuating the internal hall. The eastern wing has four-light windows to the projecting ground floor and paired three-light windows above. The symmetrical north-eastern entrance front has a slightly projecting central entrance bay with a moulded segmental arch and a three-light window above, flanked by three three-light windows on each side. Rainwater hoppers are dated 1926.

The interior retains the original form and features, including a half-panelled assembly hall with an open hammer-beam timber roof, a balcony at one end, and three canted, balustraded balconies opening from the upper floor on the south side. The octagonal room above the main entrance, formerly a library, is also original.

The block was constructed as an expansion to the well-known Christ's College boarding school, founded in 1857 by Thomas Reader White, Rector of Finchley. It stands opposite the original school building by Edward Roberts.