St Johns Cottage

St John's Cottage and St John’s Lodge are a former school and schoolmaster's house, dating from 1859 and likely designed by John Deason for John Farnell. The building is now two dwellings. Constructed of squared and coursed limestone with ashlar dressings, it has gabled slate roofs and stone ridge and lateral stacks. The building has a complex layout, with the house to the right of the former school. It is built in a Gothic Revival style with an asymmetrical two-storey, three-window front, featuring two gables separated by a central tower with a cinquefoil-headed light and pyramidal roof. The gable to the house on the right has a plank door with decorative hinges set in a pointed-arched architrave, and chamfered stone-mullioned windows of up to three lights. The gable to the former school on the left has a three-light stone-mullioned and transomed window with cinquefoil lights. A smaller gabled porch is set to the left, with a heraldic crest above a similar pointed-arched doorway. Other elevations are in a similar style, featuring a picturesque grouping of stacks and gables. Walls and former service buildings enclose a former service courtyard to the rear of the house. Internally, St John’s Lodge, the former school, has quatrefoils let into boarded ceilings of canted common rafter roofs in two former schoolrooms. The building is part of a group, which includes a church and almshouses, erected for the local benefactor and brewer John Farnell.