Medway Adult Education Centre

The Medway Adult Education Centre, formerly known as the Rochester Technical Institute, is a building constructed between 1905 and 1906 by architects S B Russell and Edwin Cooper. It is designed in a Neo-English Baroque style and features red brick with limestone ashlar dressings and a hipped roof covered with Welsh slate.

The building has a central entrance that leads to a rear Imperial stair and a large hall on the first floor. It includes classrooms and smaller offices, as well as top-lit attic studios. The main block is two and a half storeys tall with an attic.

The front elevation has a symmetrical arrangement of bays, with a prominent dentil cornice. The central bays project slightly and are accentuated by a cornice that extends over four giant pilasters, which are rusticated below a ground-floor lintel band that wraps around the building. The entrance is recessed and features a portico formed by Tuscan columns. The entrance has late 20th-century glazed doors flanked by sash windows. The first-floor windows are sash style with moulded architraves and cornices, and beneath the main cornice, each bay has a blank panel flanked by garlands. The side bays are detailed with rusticated brick quoins, sash windows with exposed frames in rubbed brick surrounds with keystones, and metal-framed oculi in the upper half storey. The ground and first floors feature 20 and 24-pane sash windows throughout. Continuous dormers create an attic storey, topped by a central tall cupola.

The wing facing Corporation Street is three storeys high, with large sash windows and minimal stone dressings. At the rear, there are two utilitarian four-storey wings made of gault brick. Inside, the building has a metal roof membrane and concrete floors with parquet blocks. This building is recognized as a good example of the work of these significant early 20th-century architects.