Bedhampton Arts Centre (The Old School)

School and attached schoolhouse, now arts centre and offices. Built in 1868 to the design of Richard William Drew, a London architect. Extended in 1873 and 1895. Twentieth-century flat-roofed extensions of no special interest.

The building is constructed of red brick laid in Flemish bond with some contrasting blue and black brickwork, stone cills, and clay tile roofs. The plan is aligned north-south with a long hall on the east side, two classrooms set at right angles on the west side, and the schoolhouse forming a continuation of the school hall on the south side. The entrance area between the classrooms has been altered and infilled.

The school and house form an irregular, picturesque composition combining Gothic and domestic revival styles, with steep pitched roofs, some half-hipped, and deep overhanging eaves. The school features tall stepped stacks with tumbled-in brickwork; the house has moulded stacks. Both are detailed with moulded brick string-courses and window surrounds, and Gothic hopper heads.

On the north elevation, the gable end of the hall has tall paired 10-light casement windows with moulded brick surrounds and canted arches, separated by a stepped buttress; the top lights are canted, a detail repeated on most windows. The upper part of the gable displays a string course above which blue-brick diapering appears, with a bracketed hipped bellcote surmounted by a metal cross. The lower classroom has a broad cross gable also with a bellcote feature and a 12-light window with segmental relieving arch above, flanked by 4-light windows.

The west elevation is flanked by half-hipped gable ends of the two classrooms: the northern classroom with a 9-light window and the southern with 12 lights. The entrance area between has been infilled with a modern block. The south elevation of the northern classroom has tall windows breaking through the eaves with tile-hung gables. The east elevation of the hall has three 12-light windows with stepped buttresses between; the top lights have shouldered arches, and the central window has been modified to form a door.

The schoolhouse is one storey plus attic, with one-and-a-half bays and a gabled cross wing. The west elevation has a half-hip to the cross gable, with two 4-light windows with cambered top lights to the ground floor separated by a stepped buttress, and paired sashes above. A hipped dormer breaks through the eaves. The east elevation has a lean-to porch in the angle of the cross wing, set at right angles to the façade, with a pointed arch pierced by small arches to the side. Windows have relieving arches—segmental to the ground floor and Gothic to the gable—with tympana infilled with chequered brick. The end stack to the south gable has a corbelled apron. A single-storey late nineteenth-century lean-to extension to the south has a small modern addition on the east side.

The interior retains arch-braced roofs to the hall and classrooms. A brass foundation plaque in the hall, inscribed in Gothic lettering, reads: "TO THE GLORY OF GOD / AND FOR / THE CHRISTIAN EDUCATION / OF THE CHILDREN OF THIS PARISH / THESE SCHOOLS / WERE ERECTED BY / W H STONE OF LEIGH PARK ESQ MP / A D 1868 / E T DAUBENEY MA RECTOR BEDHAMPTON". The schoolhouse has been altered for use as offices but retains its stair.

The school was built in 1868 to the design of Richard William Drew, endowed by local benefactor William Stone MP for the children of the parish. Stone and Drew were Cambridge acquaintances, and Drew had designed Stone's mansion, Leigh Park, in the early 1860s. Bedhampton School Board was formed in 1871, and the land and school were leased to the Board in 1873 for use as a school, Sunday school, and public meeting rooms. The school was enlarged in 1873 and again in 1895 to accommodate approximately 180 children. It closed in 1985 and subsequently became Bedhampton Arts Centre.

Richard William Drew (1834-1903) practised in London and was married to Ann Bletchley Starey, the niece of William Butterfield. He may have been a pupil of Butterfield and worked for the eminent ecclesiastical architect Henry Woodyer, himself a pupil of Butterfield, before establishing his own practice. The design shows the influence of the Butterfield and Woodyer connections in its irregular massing, picturesque composition of steep roofs, tall stepped chimneys, deep eaves, half hips, polychromy, tumbled-in brickwork, and hipped bellcotes. The building remains largely intact with original windows.