Stanford County Junior School Including Walls And Gate Piers And Railings

Stanford County Junior School is a board school built in 1893, attributed to Thomas Simpson and possibly designed by his son, John W Simpson. It stands in Brighton on Stanford Road.

The building is constructed of brown and red brick set in English bond, with dressings of red brick, stone and render, and a tile roof. The walls are generally brown brick with stone and red brick quoins and dressings to openings, and bands of red brick and stone, though the upper parts of the walls and gables are in places entirely red brick.

The school comprises two main blocks. The former Junior school is of 2 and 3 storeys, while the former Infants block is of one storey. Viewed from Stanford Road, the school is set out in four distinct parts.

The entrance is marked by a 3-storey tower to the former junior block, with a linked cloakroom range. The tower features an elliptical-arched entrance with stone and gauged red brick voussoirs beneath a corbelled, open and broken pediment. Above this is a flat-arched window with an eared architrave and cornice, followed by two further flat-arched windows, then a flat-arched window with pilasters and segmental cornice. A corbelled offset supports a clock and lantern stage, with the clock set in an aedicule with a scrolled pediment. This forms part of a balustraded parapet enclosing an octagonal timber lantern with ogee lead roof. The cloakroom range has flat- and segmental-arched windows of red and gauged red brick.

Immediately south of the tower, set slightly back, is a 5-window range including halls fronting Stanford Road. Round-arched windows light the basement, above which rises the first of a series of offsets. From these offsets, buttress-like strips run up between the windows, which are segmental-arched to the ground floor with archivolts interrupted by the strips. A second offset marks the point where the decorative gabled strip terminates. First-floor windows are flat-arched with stone lintels, with a third offset immediately above. Between these windows the strips have concave chamfers and bands of red brick and stone, terminating in a stone moulding. An embattled parapet with stone coping crowns this range. The left-hand return contains a round-arched window to the first-floor hall, and a bell in the apex of the gable, suspended from a wrought-iron bracket under a gabled wooden belfry.

North of the clock tower is a projecting gabled wing with segmental-arched windows to basement and ground floor, and flat-arched windows above. These follow the pattern typical of classroom windows in the junior block, with three windows to each classroom, the central one broader. On the first floor, the central window is also taller, running up into the gable. First-floor windows have brick aprons and stone lintels with floating cornices. The gable is scrolled and stepped with stone bands and louvres flanked by tiny pilasters. One corniced stack serves the rear. The right-hand return has segmental-arched classroom windows, and stone bands and pilastered louvres to the gables.

At the south end is the former Infants block, connected to the Junior block by a low range. The south front consists of two flat-arched windows beneath semicircular gables with stone banding and pilastered louvres, and a louvred lantern, now incomplete, to the hall. South of this is a gabled range with a third flat-arched window, slightly set back.

The rear elevations of the Junior block have three sets of classroom windows to each floor beneath identical gables, the gable faces rendered with louvres framed by pilasters and cornices. An entrance under a hipped roof is situated towards the north end, featuring a full dormer to the first floor, detailed like its neighbouring gables. A 2-storey late 20th-century extension sits between the Junior and Infant blocks. The rear of the Infants block has classroom windows with four gables above, two to the right shouldered. The three gables not obscured by the extension have been altered in cement where they meet the eaves.

The interior retains its original plan and detailed features to a remarkable degree, the principal change being the blocking of fireplaces and ventilation ducts. The Junior block contains halls on both floors to the east with panelled dados and, on the first floor, a trussed roof apparently of iron. Classrooms flank the halls and occupy the cross range at the north end. These classrooms have tiled dados and trussed timber roofs on the first floor, though those at the north end now have suspended ceilings on the first floor. Original tiled dados to passages, architraves, overlights and panelled doors survive throughout the building. The Infants block has a hall to the east, now divided, and four classrooms, three to the west and one to the south, all with tiled dados and trussed roofs.

The boundary treatment in Stanford Road comprises square corniced gate piers of red brick, recently refurbished, with a dwarf brick wall with stone coping. Cast-iron railings with spearhead finials and bracketed triple urn standards are set between the piers. Three surviving gates remain, one inscribed 'INFANTS' and another 'BOYS'. Walls with brick plinths, piers and coping, and panels of flint, extend around the edges of the playground and across it where the level changes to the north of the school.