School House and Attached Laboratories at Leighton Park School is a Grade II listed building in the Reading local planning authority area, England. First listed on 14 December 1978. School. 2 related planning applications.
School House and Attached Laboratories at Leighton Park School
- WRENN ID
- slow-cellar-sunrise
- Grade
- II
- Local Planning Authority
- Reading
- Constituency
- Earley and Woodley MP: Yuan Yang (Lab)
- Country
- England
- Date first listed
- 14 December 1978
- Type
- School
- Address
- School House and Attached Laboratories at Leighton Park School, Shinfield Road, RG2 7ED
- OS grid reference
- SU 732 714
- Coordinates
- 51.43721, -0.94721
- Source
- Historic England listing
Description
The School House and attached laboratories at Leighton Park School, formerly known as Pepper House, were built in 1830 and originally belonged to the Cobham family. The building was extended in 1891 by Alfred Waterhouse for use as a school. The School House is two storeys high with a basement, constructed of painted brick on a plinth. It features flanking corner piers, stone architraves, and bracket cills, along with a moulded string at the first-floor level. The cornice and blocking course add to its architectural detail.
On the first floor, there are six windows with panels below, while the ground floor has two windows: a left-hand tripartite window with a bracket cornice and a right-hand angled bay window with pilasters and a cornice. The windows are cross-glazed sash types. A large Tuscan porch from the circa 1840s is centrally located, with a recessed doorway flanked by niches and a shaped border in front that indicates the former presence of a fountain. The south front has a 1:5:1 bay arrangement, with the outer bays breaking forward and featuring tripartite windows. A central half-glazed door leads to a terrace that includes a small ha-ha and a retaining wall.
The school laboratories extension faces west and has a slight gabled break with a three-bay deep projection linked to a further block to the north by an arch with a passage. This extension is also two storeys high with a basement, built of grey brick with red brick quoins, dressings, and lacing bands. It has a red brick plinth capping and stepped verge to the gables, along with segmental-headed plate glass sash windows and a slate roof. There is a small extension to the east that features a tile-hung lavatory oriel.
Local climate
School House and Attached Laboratories at Leighton Park School sits in a drier-than-average part of the UK, with an average of 740 mm of rain a year. This makes it drier than 76% of listed buildings in the UK. Its exposure to wind-driven rain is lower than that of 68% of listed buildings.
It experiences an average of 32 freeze-thaw cycles a year, fewer than 57% of listed buildings. Of these, 14 follow at least 1 mm of rain in the preceding 48 hours. Average temperatures at this location have risen by 0.3°C per decade since 1991.
Averages for 1991–2020; temperature trend 1991–2025. Figures describe the wider area (a grid cell of roughly 10 km), not the individual site. Contains modified Copernicus Climate Change Service information 2026.
More on this building
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- Full EPC report — heating system, energy costs, size, glazing, construction etc.
- No sale records on file
- Related listed building consents — 2 applications
- Detailed attributes — period, style, materials, features
- Flood risk assessment
- Radon risk assessment
- Weather exposure and heating demand — rain and frost month by month and year by year, wind direction, solar and humidity
Matched applications, energy data and sale records are assembled automatically and may contain errors. Flag incorrect data.
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