Priory School

The Priory School, formerly the Southern Grammar School for Girls, is a school building dating to around 1910, designed by G.E. Smith. It is constructed of red brick in English bond, with extensive stone dressings. The roof is concealed, with a brick stack topped with stone and detailing at the right side of the third bay.

The building is symmetrical in design, employing an English Wren-Baroque Revival style. It is three storeys high and has fifteen bays. The three bays at each end and the centre bay project slightly. The front elevation features flush stone quoins to the first and second floors.

The central bay contains a pair of half-glazed doors, each with six panes below a raised and fielded panel, and a radial glazed fanlight set under a round stone arch with a keystone. A stone portico with flanking Doric columns fronts the doors, supported by Doric pilasters with stone blocks linking the lower half, a broken entablature, and a deep open pediment with a panelled soffit. The tympanum features leaf motif carvings. To the left and right of the centre bay are twelve-pane sash windows with a wood transom and a fixed six-pane light above, set within a stone architrave, flat arch, and keystone. Further to the left and right are metal casements, each with thirty panes and two transoms, set under a flat stone arch with three keystones rising into a stone band. A stone plinth runs along the base. The first and second floors contain fifteen windows each, with twenty-pane unequal sashes, a wood transom, and an eight-pane fixed casement above, all set within a stone eaved architrave with a keystone. The moulded stone architrave over the first-floor windows is slightly swept up to the keystone. The sash window above the portico is shorter by four panes. Windows in bays 4, 5, 6, 10, 11, and 12 each have two projecting stone blocks at the jambs. The second-floor sashes feature long, narrow keystones running into a stone frieze and a modillion cornice. A segmental brick pediment with a stone cornice sits above the centre three bays, and each of the end three bays has a brick parapet with stone coping.