The Former Priory Road School Buildings

This is a former Board School, later used as a music centre, built in 1890 in Hastings for the Hastings School Board by Frank H Humphrey. The building is constructed of red brick with stone dressings, and has a tiled roof with elaborate lead ventilation louvres and brick chimneystacks. It is designed in the Queen Anne style.

The main part of the school comprises a large hall running southwest to northeast, with two classrooms on either side. A two-storey schoolmaster's house is located to the southwest, where the entrance is situated.

The southeast front features the two-storey schoolmaster's house to the right, with a hipped roof, a semi-dormer with a round-headed window and sixteen-pane sash, and a moulded brick stringcourse. Ground floor windows are round-headed. An octagonal brick tower, in three stages with a tiled roof and metal finial, is attached to the northeast. The lower two floors of the tower each have a round-headed sash window, while the upper bell stage has paired round-headed openings with columns and wooden louvres. A pedimented gable with brick and stone rib and a round-headed window with mullions, transomes, glazing bars, and five stone keystones is located to the left of the tower. A smaller, similar gable is present on the return and end elevations, both incorporating brick buttresses. The northwest elevation has two projecting pedimented gables with kneelers, brick, and stone ribs. One window is a full-height round-headed four-light mullioned and transomed window, while the other is a Diocletian window. The southwest front continues the schoolmaster’s house with a first-floor round-headed window and a ground-floor penticed lean-to with a window and projecting porch with a cambered entrance. To the right are two gables with wooden four-light tall round-headed mullioned and transomed windows and glazing bars. The northeast front has two gables; the right-side gable has a pediment, brick, and stone rib, and kneelers; the left-side gable projects and is plainer. Both gables feature full-height four-light round-headed mullioned and transomed windows with glazing bars.

Internally, the building has a red and black chequered tiled corridor. The six-bay hall has an arch-braced roof supported by corbels. Each of the four classrooms is of two bays, also with an arch-braced roof on corbels. Bolection-moulded fireplaces with brown tiles and firegrates are combined with wooden cupboards. The former schoolmaster's house was not inspected internally, but the tower staircase has cast-iron balustrading, visible from the exterior.