Bathwick C Of E Junior School (Former)

Bathwick Church of England Junior School (former)

Former school building, now vacant. Built 1840-1841 by John Pinch the Younger, extended around 1868, with further twentieth-century additions. The building demonstrates the development of the Gothic Revival style from the early picturesque Tudor Gothic period to a freer, bolder idiom.

The school was founded in 1838 by the Reverend Edward Boyle, Curate of Bathwick, as a parochial school for educating poor children in the principles of the established church. An inscription in the former classroom records that the building was erected in 1841, enlarged in 1846, and underwent further enlargement of the boys' school in 1868. The school closed around 1980.

Materials and exterior appearance

The building is constructed of limestone ashlar, with a later nineteenth-century block of machine-cut rough-surfaced rangework on the south face, and slate roofs. The original structure comprised two main parts arranged behind a forecourt: a schoolmaster's house to the left and a taller school house to the right, both built as a three-storey building with irregular frontage in Tudor Gothic style.

The schoolmaster's house presents a plain front to the first floor below the eaves, with a label mould over a blocked window at ground floor level. Its left return gable features a similar blocked window. The schoolhouse (originally to the right, now at centre) steps slightly forward with a forward-facing gable. Both gables share moulded coping and moulded kneelers. Flanking the schoolhouse, the chimney stacks rise with moulded cornices to octagonal shafts—paired to the left and four to the right. The school house gable terminates in an octagonal finial and features a blocked slit at the apex. Above a label mould, paired cinquefoil-headed two-light windows on the first floor display diagonal leading to the upper part of the left-hand light.

The tall ground floor carries a moulded string course above a central scrolled banner with the inscription "GIRL'S SCHOOL" carved in raised Gothic lettering. Twentieth-century double doors and a blocked overlight sit beneath a label mould and a Tudor arch with sunk spandrels, flanked by small blocked windows with label moulds.

The extension attached to the right, built around 1868, features plain openings to stone mullioned and transomed three-light windows in a narrow setback range, with the ground floor window blocked. The ground floor string course runs higher than that of the original building. The main three-storey extension block projects forward to street level. Its left return contains one window to each upper floor, each topped by a shallow pointed arched hoodmould over two trefoil ogee-headed lights. Steps rise to a shouldered arched recess containing double oak-panelled doors. A moulded string course continues across the front, rising to form a hoodmould over a blocked three-light ground floor window. To the left of this is a small window; between them, above the string course, sits a small square cinquefoil-headed window. To the second floor, a two-light window similar to that on the left return sits left-of-centre, while a similar flat-arched window positioned at eaves level occupies the second floor right-of-centre. A slightly higher range to the right displays a pavilion roof and a blank front wall, with a plain stack at the corner. The right return features a large four-light stone mullioned and transomed window serving a half dormer, with a corresponding blocked window at ground floor level.

Interior

The interior was not inspected during the listing survey.

Historical significance

The building exemplifies in microcosm the development of the Gothic Revival movement, progressing from the initial picturesque Tudor Gothic manner (widely used for institutional buildings in the 1820s and 1830s) to a freer, more confidently expressed architectural language.