Block Number 32 Roberts

Block Number 32, known as Roberts, is a dormitory block built in 1904 by Sir Henry Tanner. It features a pebbledash exterior with red brick dressings and a plain tiled roof. This building is one of eight identical H-shaped dormitory blocks arranged in symmetrical pairs around a central dining hall and tower. Blocks 30 and 31 have been altered and are not listed.

The structure is a single storey with an attic, designed in the Arts and Crafts Georgian style. It has a plinth, pilaster quoins, and a modillion eaves cornice. The projecting end gables are treated as pediments, featuring gauged and keyed Diocletian windows, along with two paired glazing bar sashes below. The interior courtyard includes alternating glazing bar sashes and three segmentally headed semi-dormers on each of its three faces, or alternatively, pedimented dormers.

In the center of the main range is a balustraded and columned open cupola, with smaller cupola-type air vents on the side wings. The outer faces of the wings have glazing bar sashes and flat-roofed dormers. There are small 20th-century extensions on the front courtyard, and the rear courtyards contain one-storey original service blocks. Entry is through half-glazed doors topped with pediments and large glazed end gables on the westernmost wings. The blocks are asymmetrical, with the arrangement of segmental semi-dormers and pedimented gables designed to mirror the adjacent paired blocks (Nos. 42 and 41, Nos. 39 and 40, and Nos. 32 and 33), rather than the opposing wing of the same H-block.