Westcott Infant School

Wescott Infant School, also known as School Road, was built in 1906 and designed by Edmund Fisher of London. It is a red brick building with English bond, pebble-dash render, and a plain tile roof featuring corniced brick stacks. The school has a cellar and a partial second floor, arranged in a “H” plan with four parallel gabled ranges and a transverse roof at the centre, creating four elevations with four bays each.

The building is an example of the Arts and Crafts style. It features a plinth, wide corner pilasters with deep dentilled cornices, side-bays defined by quoined brick strips, and half-glazed doors with glazing bars below fanlights with radial glazing. The windows are wooden with architraves and sashes, containing 12, 15, or 18 panes. Some windows are large mullion-and-transom sashes with 9-pane windows above, and others have oculi with radial glazing bars and keyed brick architraves. Tile cill strings, moulded barge-boards, and flat-roofed dormers with 2-light, 12-pane windows are also present. The principal south-east elevation has oculi above three windows in the outer bays, a porch to the inner return, an entrance, and a small side-window. The inner bays feature three windows, with a larger window at the centre. At the roof crossing, each range has a louvred wooden cupola with a leaded dome and ball finial. Six chimneys are visible; three to the right side, one to the left, and one between the left-hand bays.

The rear elevation is similar, with cambered brick arches over ground-floor windows. A single-storey addition obscures the left bay, incorporating an Ipswich window to the gable. A narrow window sits below a gabled bellcote, which is supported by shaped wooden brackets and holds a small bell.

The interior is described as light and airy. Originally, movable partitions in the centre allowed the space to be used as either classrooms or a larger hall, and this space is now used as a dining hall. Many original fittings remain, including part-glazed doors, part-glazed partitions, parquet floors, classroom cupboards (some with doors removed), wall-mounted blackboards with side cupboards, old radiators, a dog-leg staircase to the second floor, a fireplace with a decorative metal grate in the second-floor room, and a similar fireplace in the staff room.

Behind the school are two contemporary shelters constructed of red brick in Flemish bond, with sections of pink brick added to the sides of the front wall. These have mono-pitch roofs with corrugated sheeting and are each six bays wide. They are open-fronted, with timber posts on chamfered padstones and arch braces to the wall-plate. Inside each shelter is a bracketed wooden bench along the rear wall.

The school is a well-designed and executed early 20th-century building in the Arts and Crafts style.