Block Number 42 Marlborough

Block Number 42 Marlborough 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 block is one of eight identical H-shaped dormitory blocks arranged in symmetrical pairs around a central dining hall and tower. Notably, blocks 31 and 30 have been altered and are not listed.

The building is designed in the Arts and Crafts Georgian style and consists of a single storey with an attic. 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, with two paired glazing bar sashes below.

Inside, there is a courtyard with alternating glazing bar sashes and three segmentally headed semi-dormers on each of its three faces, or alternatively, pedimented dormers. The central main range includes a balustraded and columned open cupola, along 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 one-storey 20th-century extensions in the front courtyard, while the rear courtyards contain original one-storey service blocks.

Entry to the building 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, Nos. 32 and 33), rather than the opposite wing of the same H-block.