Downs Junior School And Attached Walls And Gate Piers

Downs Junior School and attached walls and gate piers

A board school dated 1890, built as the Ditchling Road Board School to the designs of Thomas Simpson for the School Board of Brighton, with additions of around 1900. The building is constructed in brown brick with dressings of red brick, gauged red brick, cement, stone and terracotta, and has a slate roof.

The school is laid out along the north side of Rugby Road, with classrooms generally facing onto Rugby Road and halls facing the playground to the north. It is divided into a two-storey block to the west, which was used for Junior Girls and Boys, and a single-storey block to the east for Infants. Both storeys sit over a basement.

The western block features a flat-arched entrance at its east end, flanked by pilasters of red brick and stone with a segmental arch above. The west range is arranged in four gabled sections, each with two broad inner windows and two narrow outer windows to the ground floor. These windows are cambered-arched with heads of gauged red brick, and all have 6/6 sashes of original design with toplights. A storey band separates this from the first floor, which has two broad inner windows with decorative aprons of gauged red brick and two narrow, shorter outer windows with 6/6 sashes of original design; toplights are provided only to the inner windows. The gables are decorated with pediments in cement and vertical ribs of angled bricks framing louvres. The westernmost section projects slightly and differs from the rest, with only three equal-width windows to the ground floor and a basement featuring segmental-arched windows. Corniced stacks sit between the gables, and the roof has decorative ridge tiles. The hall range has a renewed lantern.

The east range contains four classrooms, each beneath its own gable with three windows. All windows have 6/6 sashes, with the central window being taller and fitted with a toplight. These are flanked by pilasters which run up across a moulded band to form a panel in the gable around the louvres. The apexes of the gables are faced entirely in red brick, and the roof carries decorative ridge tiles.

On the north side facing the playground, all windows are cambered-arched with heads of gauged red brick. The central hall range has five windows, with the second and fourth on the first floor carried up above the eaves under hips. To the left stands a gabled wing with a mezzanine; to the right a lower wing with varied fenestration including an oriel window to the first floor and a parapet upswept at the corners. The east wing comprises a range of seven windows, with the three easternmost windows under a half-hip and the second and third from the west raised under a hip.

The interior retains its original plan in essentials, with classrooms grouped around the halls on two storeys in the western block and a smaller hall on the north side of the Infants block with classrooms grouped around it. The halls retain boarded dados, with tiled dados frequently surviving in classrooms and passages. Partitions between the central, south-facing classrooms and the hall survive on both floors, though these are now fixed.

The boundary treatment comprises a dwarf wall to Rugby Road of brick with stone coping and brick piers. The main entrance features an ornate segmental arch with square brick piers offset in stone, topped by a terracotta panel of Flemish Renaissance ornament crowned by a stone entablature with a segmental lintel and central pediment. Cast-iron railings and an original cast- and wrought-iron gate are present.

Approximately eight metres from Ditchling Road, the character of the wall changes to about two metres in height, with panels of flint framed by red brick between panelled piers. This wall runs for approximately fifty metres to the Infants entrance, which is a simpler version of the Rugby Road entrance, also with an original cast- and wrought-iron gate. The wall continues as a dwarf brick wall with panelled brick piers and cast-iron railings in front of the Schoolkeeper's house, then returns to full height in Grantham Road and Edburton Avenue, enclosing the school playground. In Grantham Road stands the Junior Mixed entrance, matching the design of the Infants entrance in Ditchling Road, with its original gate.