St Lukes School

St Luke's School

A board school built between 1900 and 1903, designed by Thomas Simpson. The building is constructed in red and brown brick in stretcher bond, combined in contrasting bands and patterns and sometimes alternating with stone courses. Stone and rubbed brick dressings and ornament are employed throughout. The roofs are tiled, with bell towers of lead and timber.

The school has a roughly T-shaped plan, articulated as a series of tall blocks, most with 2 storeys. The elevation rises to 3 storeys towards the south-west where the hillside falls away. The architect has combined a variety of materials and ornamental devices in an Arts and Crafts Free style.

The entrance elevation is dominated by a tall 2-storey block in the leg of the T. This contains an assembly hall for the infants' school on the ground floor and a larger assembly hall for the upper school above. The end wall features a flat-arched window to the ground floor and a keyed round-arched window above, framed by shallow brick piers to form a 2-storey aedicule topped by a segmental pediment filled with floral ornament and the Borough crest on a cartouche. The 3-window returns have full-height brick pilasters with segmental-arched ground-floor windows and flat-arched windows above. A continuous stone entablature with high brick parapet runs around this block, which has a hipped roof.

In the angles between this block and the main lateral block are two flat-arched entrances, each framed by a stone aedicule with a shouldered architrave, shallow porch and segmental overlight. Above each lintel are metal letters in stylized early 20th-century script derived from late antique inscriptions.

Each entrance is set in the base of a full-height stair tower of 3 stages. The second stage has a round-arched keyed window, whilst the top stage features an elliptical keyed window with spandrels ornamented in cut and rubbed brick forming floral swags. The stair towers project above the main roof with corner piers and terminate in gablets. Each has an 8-sided lead-covered cupola or bell cote. To the left stair tower is additionally a 3-storey turret. The main block's entablature continues across the arms of the T, terminating abruptly at the returns.

The side elevations have a more relaxed and informal composition. The left wing's ground floor has floor-to-ceiling windows with coupled lights above each. On the right, this arrangement is reversed. Corner stacks are set in the hipped main roof. Attached to the right arm is a 3-and-a-half storey gabled wing with segmental and flat-arched windows, beneath which sits a single-storey classroom building.

The rear elevation displays a 12-window range grouped in threes, with the centre window broader than the sides. Each tripartite arrangement is articulated as a gabled bay with a small double light in each gable. In its lower reaches, this elevation is faced with stucco scored to imitate ashlar; above, the heads of the top-floor windows and gables are of brick. To the right of this group of 4 gables is a 3-storey tower block, set back from the rear wall yet finished with a gable matching the scale and shape of the others.

Internally, the lower parts of walls are faced with greenish-blue glazed tile. The upper school assembly hall has an open timber roof of 4 bays supported by arched collar beams; its upper reaches are now ceiled. Opposite the end wall is a gallery. A mural, probably dating to after 1918, is painted on the end wall and depicts large-scale figures representing local and historical types.