Charterhouse School (Main Building)

CHARTERHOUSE SCHOOL (MAIN BUILDING)

A school building in French Gothic style, built in 1872 by P C Hardwick and expanded with later additions. The principal later addition is the Great Hall, built in 1884 by Sir A Blomfield.

The building is constructed in Bargate rubblestone with ashlar dressings and finished with plain tile roofs. The main roofing features red and blue tile banding on elements of the principal elevation (Saunderite House was re-tiled in 1988).

The plan is arranged around a quadrangle that is open on the west side. A bell-tower stands at the centre of the central range. The original school chapel, now used as a concert hall, forms the right (south) wing, whilst boarding accommodation (Saunderites) occupies the left wing. The right side of the central range extends to the rear and contains boarding accommodation (Gownboys) and links on the south side to another boarding house (Verites), which aligns with the former chapel. Behind the left side of the central range is a cloister linking to a T-shaped classroom addition of approximately 1900. A further cloister behind the cloister and Gownboys house connects to the former Great Hall of 1885, now used as library, museum and hall.

The 1872 buildings are two storeys with attics, together with four-storey water towers. The Great Hall and the approximately 1900 classroom addition are two storeys.

The architectural style employs characteristic French Gothic features: chamfered plinths; quoins; offset buttresses; mullioned and transomed windows with quoined surrounds, relieving arches and pointed-arched lights, or cusped-headed lights to windows of the most important elements. Attic windows rise through eaves under gables with trefoils in apexes and cross-finials. Chimneys are quoined with multiple octagonal flues. The water towers feature first-floor oriels, moulded surrounds and hoodmoulds to windows, and pyramidal roofs with lucarnes and wrought-iron weather vanes.

The main (west) elevation presents a central range of three bays. The central feature is a four-stage tower with angle buttresses rising into octagonal piers with crocketed spirelets. An entrance sits beneath a two-storey oriel. A decorated band appears below the belfry stage, which has paired, louvred, two-light openings. An arcaded parapet with a central statue tops the range, and a pyramidal roof with zig-zag leading, a lucarne band and a wrought-iron finial with cross crowns the composition. The flanking ranges each have one wide projecting gabled bay. The bay to the left of the tower contains a polygonal tower with a lucarne to its roof.

The left wing (Saunderites) displays a nine-bay courtyard elevation with a wide near-central projecting gabled bay and two bay-windows to the ground floor, with an entrance at the right end. Its west elevation of four bays includes a water tower on the left and a gabled right-hand bay with a two-storey crenellated canted bay window.

The right wing has a nine-bay courtyard elevation with an entrance in the left bay linking to the former chapel. The former chapel is distinguished by gableted finials rising into crocketed spirelets and windows mostly of three lights with geometric tracery, a cusped-traceried parapet and crested ridge tiles. The west elevation of this wing comprises four bays: a two-bay chapel end on the left, a three-stage clock tower with paired louvred belfry windows and a pyramidal roof with clock faces in crocketed gableted surrounds with spirelets, and a right-hand bay of single storey forming the end of the South African cloister, added in 1901 as a Boer War Memorial.

The south elevation is dominated by the former chapel on the left, fronted by the South African cloister of ten bays with heavily-moulded entrances to the end bays, wide four-light windows, a parapet and a second storey under a hipped roof to bays six and seven. To the right, set back, is the gable end of the Gownboys range, followed by an eleven-bay range (Verites) which has a water tower at either end, an entrance in bay five, a gabled projecting bay seven, and two bay-windows to the ground floor.

The Great Hall by Blomfield is a well-lit seven-bay open hall flanked by single-storey ranges (each under several roofs) executed in Perpendicular style. The east end of the hall features tripled windows of two, four and two lights. The gable is of ashlar with an angel corbel and blind tracery rising into a stack, whilst a central ridge spire with louvred lucarnes at its base, a corona and a delicate wrought-iron finial crown the composition. The returns have close-set windows that alternately rise through eaves under gables with roll-moulded coping and cross-finials. At the west end of the hall is an earlier lower-roofed range (now library and museum) with long flat-roofed dormers and a gabled ridge louvre.

Internally, the Great Hall contains a hammer-beam type roof with king posts and a blocked three-bay arcade, which formerly linked to the library. The 1872 block retains panelling and stone surrounds to some fireplaces. The South African cloister houses a number of memorials, including a fine Boer War memorial in bronze depicting an angel holding a fallen soldier with figures of St George and Joan of Arc in the architrave. A throughway from the cloister leads to the quadrangle, the lobby having a rusticated archway and walling bearing boys' names and dates from the 18th and 19th centuries, brought from the former school in London.

The school was relocated from London to Godalming in 1872 by William Haig-Brown, the Headmaster at that time.