The Royal High School

School. Dated 1856, with considerable alterations and extensions in 1864–1866 and 1883–1884. Designed by James Wilson, with extensions by WG Habershon and Fawckner.

The building is constructed of rock-faced limestone with freestone dressings, with steeply pitched slate roofs featuring ridge and valley stacks. The plan is irregular. This elaborate Gothic Revival school complex comprises two storeys with attics and basements, displaying a ten-window range. Windows are pointed arches with stone mullions, many with leaded tracery and trefoil heads to the lights of first floor and attic windows. Coped gables have moulded kneelers and stone finials.

The main feature is a three-stage entrance tower positioned right of centre, with a pierced quatrefoil parapet and gargoyles to the cornice. The upper stage has slightly trefoiled three-light louvered openings with plate tracery, pierced aprons, and shallow weathered sills. Gabled angle buttresses flank a clock set in a pointed arched triangle above a two-light window, with a moulded sill stringcourse below. Carved shields flank a cartouche with inscriptions over a moulded pointed arch to the set-back door.

A large gabled range to the left features a circular panel to the apex and a canted oriel with rich foliate spandrels to a pointed arched three-light window, a pierced trefoil parapet, and carved bear and lion on corbel. Two three-light windows occupy the ground floor. To the left of this gable stands an octagonal turret with a conical roof and elaborate decoration. A smaller set-back gable with two-light windows to each floor and an external stack to the first floor of the left return adjoins the turret. Further left, a three-window wing set further back features three half-dormers with two-light windows above machicolated eaves, three-light windows to the first floor, and four-light windows to the ground floor, articulated by offset buttresses. A tall projecting gable features a carved triangular panel to the apex, a flat-arched four-light window to the first floor, and a similar five-light window to the ground floor. Various flat-roofed and gabled blocks occupy the far left, possibly later additions. To the right of the tower, a similar set-back three-window wing echoes the left arrangement, with a terminal taller gable featuring a small trefoil panel to the apex, a three-light window to the first floor, and paired two-light windows to the ground floor. The right return displays a variety of similar windows. The rear features a lateral crested roof four-window right wing with two-light windows to dormers and first floor and three-light windows to the ground floor.

The school was founded as Bath and Lansdown Proprietary College, a boys' day school under the patronage of the Duke of Beaufort and the Marquis of Lansdowne, whose arms appear on the building along with those of the Reverend Sydney H. Widrington. The venture failed due to its distance from Bath and was sold for £1000 in 1862. It was refounded as the Royal School for Daughters of Officers of the Army and opened on 24 August 1865, modelled on the Royal Naval Female School of 1840. In 1996 it was announced that the school would be amalgamated with Bath High School as the Royal Bath High School, with effect from 1998.