The Park Preparatory School

This is a former detached house, dating from around 1840, now part of a school. Constructed of limestone ashlar with a complex slate roof and tall, octagonal chimneys with moulded cornices. The building is arranged with a double-depth plan and is designed in a Tudor Gothic style.

The two-and-three-storey, three-bay front features a moulded parapet and string course rising over two forward-facing, shouldered gables to the right and returns. The windows are set in flat-arched recesses with sunk spandrels and four-centred arched heads. The two-storey gable to the right has a single-shafted chimney as a finial, and a label mould above a three-light, three-pane window on the first floor. A canted bay window on the ground floor has a moulded parapet, string course, and a tall two-light window. A smaller, set-forward gable acts as a two-storey porch which has an octagonal finial; a hip-roofed oriel window incorporates shields within quatrefoiled aprons, with a two-pane window on each facet. A label mould with ornamented spandrels sits above a Tudor-arched porch with a half-glazed door and side-lights featuring Gothic glazing. The three-storey range to the left has a gable stack, a single attic window, and the string course forms a hoodmould over a two-light window on the second floor, above a two-storey, shallow rectangular castellated bay with three-light windows to both floors. The left return has two gables with triple-shafted stacks and hoodmoulds to the windows of a projecting gable, while the right return features external stacks – one with two shafts and the other, on a projecting gable, with three shafts.

The interior has not been inspected.

Originally named The Retreat, this house is a good example of the Romantic influences on house design at the end of the Georgian era, demonstrating an adaptation of a style more frequently used in school and college buildings. It is indicative of the designs of James Wilson. Formerly used as a nursing home, it was adapted for school use in 1959, with an assembly hall added in 1982.