Henry Box School

The Henry Box School is a late 17th-century school building located on Church Green, Witney. A datestone indicates construction in 1660. The building is constructed with roughcast over limestone rubble, with chamfered plinth, ashlar quoins and dressings, and a hipped Welsh slate roof featuring ashlar ridge stacks, with three diamond-set flues to each stack of the centre range and six similar stacks to the side-wing stacks. The layout is U-shaped, with front wings. It is two storeys high with an attic and has a symmetrical 6-window front elevation and a 1:4:1 window arrangement. Cellar windows are stone-mullioned and two-light. The central entrance features a panelled double-leaf door set within a chamfered stone architrave. Above the entrance, a string course runs as hood moulds over four chamfered stone-mullioned and transomed cross windows, each with a lunette in the head. The same string course continues to the gable ends of the two-storey side wings, which are also punctuated by cross windows. A gabled roof dormer incorporates leaded casements. The interior side walls of the side wings contain two-panelled doors set in chamfered architraves, chamfered transomed lights, and a cross window to the right. The outer side walls replicate this pattern of cross windows. The rear elevation has three cross windows, a chamfered stone light, a 20th-century door set in a stop-chamfered stone architrave, and four cross windows each with a lunette in the head. The central schoolroom features a coved cornice. End walls include chamfered stone fireplaces, and a central 18th-century semi-circular arched door with fluted pilasters and moulded capitals. The left end wall has fluted pilasters leading to a gallery with a mid-17th-century moulded handrail to a balustrade. The side wings feature stop-chamfered spine beams, quarter-turn stairs with turned balusters at attic level, and 17th-century ribbed doors in the attic. The roof is supported by collar-truss rafters with butt purlins.