Epsom College: The Original Eastern Range comprising Whitehouse Girls' House, Crawfurd Girls' House, The Dining Hall, Granville Boy's House, the IT and Drama Studios, the Big School Assembly Hall and the English Department

Epsom College: The Original Eastern Range

This complex, located on the south side of College Road, comprises a series of interconnected buildings forming the original core of Epsom College: Whitehouse Girls' House, Crawfurd Girls' House, The Dining Hall, Granville Boy's House, the IT and Drama Studios, the Big School Assembly Hall and the English Department.

The buildings were founded in 1853 as the Royal Medical Benevolent College by John Propert, a London surgeon, and designed by architect T H Clifton. The scheme provided accommodation for one hundred pensioners—qualified medical men or their widows—together with a school for 150 doctors' sons, of whom 50 would be orphans. The college was financed by donations from doctors and their patients. Although the foundation stone was laid in 1853, funds ultimately permitted only 20 pensioners and 150 school pupils. The college opened on 25 June 1855 with Prince Albert present, initially housing about 100 boys including 40 "Foundationers" whose education was provided free. By 1863, as the school grew towards 200 pupils, new purpose-built classrooms and a large assembly hall were added to the south.

The original building is a long asymmetrical range aligned north-east to south-west, constructed in Gothic style with red brick and ashlar dressings, pitched tile roofs, and grouped brick stacks with cornicing. It comprises six almshouses to the north and school buildings to the south, ranging from two to three storeys.

The northern end features a projecting former almshouse of two storeys with attics and two gables. This is followed by a long range of five former almshouses—now boarding houses—of two storeys divided by two three-storey gables and two two-storey gables, each with an arrow-slit window to the attics and an arched doorcase. The ground floor has three four-light canted bays and terminates in a gabled section with an oriel window.

The southern school buildings feature a large gable with a five-light two-tier window of stained glass roundels separated by a quatrefoil band, with a buttress below. There follows a three-storey symmetrical section with a central four-storey tower topped by an octagonal turret with crenellated parapet. A three-storey stone porch extends from this tower, splayed to the second floor and square to the first floor, with an elaborate porte cochere to the ground floor featuring arches and an arched entrance. To the north is a three-tier staircase window and two canted bays. A one-storey section with gables and four two-tier windows with a buttress leads to a headmaster's house of four bays, featuring a large gable to the left with gargoyles, an elaborate oriel window, and a four-storey octagonal turret.

Linked to the 1853 wing by a brick arch is the "Big School" assembly hall, a large hall of brick with stone dressings and a gabled tiled roof with terracotta ridge tiles. Its gabled west front features end buttresses, elaborate stone gargoyles, and a large five-light two-tier window with cinquefoil heads above an arched doorcase with elaborate carved spandrels. The sides comprise six bays with dogtooth cornice, stone mullioned and transomed windows, and stepped buttresses.

Adjoining directly to the east is the English Department, originally classrooms with a prefects' room and drawing room. Also in Gothic style, it consists of two storeys of red brick with stone dressings and a tiled roof. The east front has two gables with trefoil ornament and six lancet windows to the first floor, with a band of quatrefoils between ground and first floors. The ground floor contains two three-light windows and a later central bay. The sides have four lancets and four mullioned and transomed casements to the first floor, and six triple mullioned and transomed windows to the ground floor.

The interior of the 1853 building contains notable features including a stone well staircase with pierced quatrefoils, a central corridor with an unusual cambered terracotta ceiling, dado panelling with cambered doors, and a former dining hall with a four-bay scissor-braced roof. The "Big School" features a six-bay arch-braced roof with kingposts, stained glass windows depicting saints, and a gallery supported on four octagonal columns with panelled front and matching dado panelling. Each side wall displays a stone bust: one of John Propert, the college's founder (1793–1867), and the other of Dr George Cornelius Jonson (1803–1890).

This complex represents a good quality and little-altered mid-19th century Gothic style combined almshouses and school, built in 1853 with further classrooms added by 1863.