Portsmouth Grammar School And Attached Railings

Portsmouth Grammar School, dating to approximately 1855-60, was originally built as officers' quarters and a mess within Cambridge Barracks. The building was later adopted as a school in 1926. Constructed from yellow brick and grey brick, it has a shallow-pitched Welsh slate hipped roof with a brick stack featuring a moulded stone cap on the left side of bays 4/5, 8/9, 13/14, and 18/19. The design is in a Late Georgian style.

The building follows a double-depth plan with four-room units, separated by chimneys and transverse passages with rear doorways. A deeper section to the left-hand end formerly served as a mess room. The exterior features a 40-window range, with the two flanking bays on each side of the central splayed archway, and five bays at each end, projecting slightly. A wide, splayed stone-framed round archway, flanked by smaller arched openings creating a vaulted passage, is centrally located. The ground floor has eighteen 6/6 pane sash windows, each set under a flat-gauged brick head with stone sills. Matching 6/6 pane sash windows are found on the first floor. A stone plat band, cornice with ornate stone brackets, and a stone-coped parapet run along the top of the building. Above the parapet is a royal cartouche in stone with supporters. The rear of the building has steps leading up to basement doorways and flat-headed 6/6 pane sash windows similar to those on the front. The officer's mess projects forward and features a central round-arched doorway with radial fanlights and a tripartite window above.

The interior contains a large former mess room, now a library, on the first floor, with an axial central stair featuring cast-iron balusters, leading to a central axial passage. Original doors and plasterwork remain. Attached cast-iron spear-headed forecourt railings are also present.

Historically, the building housed officers' and servants' rooms, kitchens, and mess rooms. Portsmouth Grammar School, founded in 1732, moved into the former officers' barracks in 1926. The building represents a significant mid-19th century example, being the sole surviving structure from a former area containing a concentration of barracks and reflecting its original, cramped location.