Sittingbourne Adult Studies College

Sittingbourne Adult Studies College

A school building with an integral headmaster's house, built in 1878 as Borden Grammar School. The building is constructed of stock brick with limestone dressings, beneath a red clay plain tile roof with moulded ridge tiles and stone coped gable ends with finials. The tall brick chimney stacks feature stone cornices with gargoyle-like features at the corners.

The building is designed in Gothic style and comprises a large central range containing a hall that rises through two storeys with dormitories in the attic above. This continues over a two-storey range to the north west and over a rear wing to the left. Single storey school rooms project to the left at the front in staggered ranges. At the south east end, a cross-wing contains the headmaster's house at the front and a service range at the back which encloses a small back yard. A single storey extension infilling the space between the two rear wings was added in the mid to late 20th century.

The asymmetrical south west front displays three storeys, one and two storeys, and attic levels, with bands of stone at window sill and impost levels. The former headmaster's house on the right is a three storey projecting gable-ended wing with grouped lancet windows featuring cusped heads under hoodmoulds. The second floor window in the gable has plate tracery with trefoil piercing under a pointed arch. On the ground floor sits a single storey bay with five cusped lancets between a buttress on the right and an integral porch on the left, its trefoil-headed doorway having carved spandrels.

Set back to the left of the headmaster's house, the main range comprises four, three, and four bays. The gabled centre is slightly advanced and features large three and five-light mullion-transom windows rising through two storeys with cusp-headed lights and depressed two-centred arch hoodmoulds. In the gable is a clock within a rose window, made by Gillett and Bland of Croydon in 1878. To the left and right of the centre are Gothic windows—one-light on the ground floor, two-light on the first floor, and smaller attic windows above continuing across below the central gable. At the left and right ends of the main range are gabled portals with double chamfered two-centred arches. The central gable is flanked by two tall stacks and gabled wooden ventilators in the roof.

Projecting on the left are school rooms in single storey staggered ranges with gable ends facing the front, each with a two-centred arch tympanum over the end window. The rear north east elevation has projecting gable-ended wings to left and right and large three and five-light windows at the centre, with gabled ventilators in the roof above and a gabled bellcote above them at the centre. The space between the two rear wings has been infilled with a 20th century single storey extension.

The interior retains a plain institutional character with some alterations for its various uses since ceasing to be a school. The large central hall has two lateral fireplaces of Gothic design, curiously situated under the large windows, each with a frieze of quatrefoils containing the initials WB (William Barrow) and a cast-iron grate with a blue and white tile surround. In the dormitories, the roof is partly exposed, showing trusses braced with iron tie-rods.

The school was built in 1878 as Borden Grammar School for boys using money from the Barrow Charity. William Barrow died in 1707 leaving an estate of £12,000 to be distributed among the poor of Bowden, a village near Sittingbourne. Around 1930 the building was occupied by the Kent Farm Institute until the 1960s, when it was used for teacher training. In 1979 it became the Sittingbourne Adult Studies College.