The Old School

The Old School is a former school building constructed around 1887 by The Polehampton Trust. It is made of grey Reading brick, featuring red Reading brick pilasters, strips, panels, cornices, and dressings around the windows, chimneys, and gables. The building has tiled roofs with segmental and triangular pedimented Flemish gables topped with terracotta ball finials. A tall, enriched brick chimney stack is prominent on the main elevation. Designed in the Queen Anne style, the school has an open courtyard plan with an eastern projection and is a single storey.

The main facade includes a plain entrance within a gabled lower wing, which is partly timber framed and has four lights with glazing bars under a tile-hung gable that features a vertically set window. The main windows are tall sashes with glazing bars, equipped with gauged brick segmental heads and keystones, while the western-facing gable windows are of Venetian type. The building also showcases well-detailed terracotta airbricks and includes a metal bootscraper and rosette rainwater pipe brackets.

Inside, the school retains original features, including open timber roof trusses. This school was built on the site of a demolished chapel of a school founded in 1721 by Edward Polehampton for the education of ten poor boys from Twyford. The master's house still exists nearby, and this school serves as a replacement for the original school room, which was exclusively for boys; a girls' and infants' school was constructed the following year in the village.