Adult Education Centre And Library Including Attached Wall And Gatepiers

This building, now an Adult Education Centre and Library, was originally a Board School built in 1874 following the 1870 Education Act. It was constructed on land donated by the Meryon family. The architecture is Gothic in style, featuring polychrome decoration. The building is primarily brick, utilizing stock brick with red brick dressings, and has a tiled roof with terracotta ridge tiles. It comprises one-storey ranges forming an L-shape, originally containing seven classrooms.

The facade fronting Lion Street has a southern entrance with a corbelled eaves cornice and four paired cambered pivoting casements. A projecting gabled porch features an arched doorcase with oculi and a dripmould with corbels. Buttresses separate the windows. The central porch has a saddlestone with a decorated floral finial above the arched doorcase, and stone quatrefoils in the sides of the oculi.

The east end has a gable facing the street, showcasing a giant arch with zigzag polychrome decoration. This arch contains a circular window with glazing in the form of an eight-pointed star and two pointed arches below, flanked by a central pilaster bearing the Rye Coat of Arms. Two trefoliated-headed niches display dedication tablets, one acknowledging the construction of the Public Elementary Schools of Rye in 1873 and the other recognizing the land gift from the Meryon family.

Attached to the left is a short wall with triangular brick coping and three gatepiers with pyramidal stone caps decorated with quatrefoils and metal finials. An adjoining section has a hipped tiled roof and seven windows, three of which are under a central pediment with an oculus above. A small, flat-roofed section to the west is likely a later addition. To the northwest stands another one-storey former classroom, similar in style but with flat-arched windows divided by buttresses and a flat-roofed wooden and brick porch dating to around 1960.

The L-wing to the southwest features crested ridge tiles and the base of a lead spirelet. It has six cambered casements and a pediment with a stone oculus and metal finials, with a large porch below featuring an arched doorcase with 20th-century doors. A smaller, gable-fronted room is attached to the south, showcasing an oculus with an eight-pointed star and cambered windows.

The interiors feature suspended ceilings that conceal the original roof structures, though original floorboards remain. Stop-chamfered spine beams with run-out stops are also present.