Adult Education Centre and Library Including Attached Wall and Gatepiers is a Grade II listed building in the Rother local planning authority area, England. First listed on 18 May 2001. Library, education centre. 3 related planning applications.

Adult Education Centre and Library Including Attached Wall and Gatepiers

WRENN ID
hidden-portal-reed
Grade
II
Local Planning Authority
Rother
Constituency
Hastings and Rye MP: Helena Dollimore (Lab)
Country
England
Date first listed
18 May 2001
Type
Library, education centre
Address
Adult Education Centre and Library Including Attached Wall and Gatepiers, Lion Street, Rye, TN31 7LB
OS grid reference
TQ 920 203
Coordinates
50.95041, 0.73337
Source
Historic England listing

Also on this page: EPC · related consents · flood risk · radon risk · weather exposure · detailed attributes ↓

Description

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.

Local climate

Adult Education Centre and Library Including Attached Wall and Gatepiers sits in a drier-than-average part of the UK, with an average of 710 mm of rain a year. This makes it drier than 87% of listed buildings in the UK. Its exposure to wind-driven rain is greater than that of 67% of listed buildings.

It experiences an average of 23 freeze-thaw cycles a year, fewer than 75% of listed buildings. Of these, 11 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 — 3 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
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