Nineveh Court, Attached Carriage Arch And Screen Wall, Canford School

Nineveh Court, Attached Carriage Arch and Screen Wall, Canford School

Nineveh Court is a sculpture gallery, now used as a school tuck shop, built in 1851 and designed by Sir Charles Barry. It was altered in the 20th century.

The building is constructed in white brick laid in Flemish bond with Portland limestone dressings and a Westmorland slate roof. It follows a Greek cross plan with a porch continuing the entrance arm, and is single storey in height.

The south-facing entrance features a tall pointed archway with a hoodmould and many-moulded head that dies into plain chamfered jambs. Above this, a pointed-arched sunk panel to the gable is inscribed: "THESE SCULPTURES/ WERE BROUGHT FROM/ NINEVEH/ AND PRESENTED TO SIR JOHN GUEST BART/ BY THEIR DISCOVERER/ HENRY LAYARD/ IN THE YEAR MDCCLI". The entrance, formerly open, is now glazed. On the right (east) side elevation, there is a chamfered and moulded doorway with a Tudor-arched head. The other three arms of the cruciform building each have a 3-light window to the gable end with pointed heads and Perpendicular-style tracery.

The gables are stone-coped with kneelers and gable finials, and angle buttresses appear on three arms except to the arm facing the service court, which is flanked by lower single-storey extensions with chamfered stone mullion and transom windows and a battlemented parapet.

The rear left corner of the building is joined to the northeast angle of John of Gaunt's Kitchen by a carriage arch leading to a service court. The archway lies in a wall with a battlemented parapet, stepped up over the arch itself. The carriage arch has a hollow-chamfered and wave-moulded 4-centred head and double-leaf cast-iron gates.

A 9-bay screen wall of limestone ashlar extends from the front left corner of Nineveh Court to the main house, with a 1-bay return at that end. This wall was originally designed as the garden front of a conservatory, which was subsequently dismantled and its site added to the service court. The screen wall is designed in the manner of a Perpendicular cloister walk, each bay containing a 3-light window, now blind, with a 4-centred head, Perpendicular-style tracery and hoodmould. The central cinquefoil-headed light forms a niche, while the outer blank lights are subdivided by mullion and transom with pierced quatrefoils to the head and pierced trefoils to the spandrels either side of the central light. A stone bench sits below each blank window between buttresses that define the bays. Diagonal pinnacles on the buttresses, with crocketed finials, punctuate an openwork balustrade featuring pierced trefoils, small blank shields to the string course below, and a prominent moulded stone coping.

The interior includes a porch with a tiled floor displaying Islamic-style patterns and tiled borders, and a blocked doorway to the former conservatory with a Tudor-arched head. Tall double-leaf cast-iron gates lead to the former gallery, which incorporates Assyrian motifs including bulls with bearded human heads and a pointed arched overthrow with winged bulls kneeling either side of an Assyrian symbol. The former gallery has a boarded roof with painted decoration and a central square blank opening to the crossing, which formerly housed a skylight that was removed during subsequent re-roofing. Patterned stained-glass windows are present within.

The building originally housed an important series of Assyrian reliefs excavated at Nimrod by Sir Henry Layard and presented by him to Sir John Guest, his father-in-law. Before the sale of Canford Manor in 1923, these reliefs remained in the building. The reliefs were subsequently sold in 1932 and 1959 and are now mostly in the Metropolitan Museum, New York. One Assyrian bas relief was discovered in 1994 and sold at auction at Christie's. A postcard of Canford House postmarked 17 February 1906 records the appearance of the original central lantern turret over the crossing skylight. This was square and had two stages: the bottom stage had four tall thin windows with pointed heads to each side and pinnacles, while the upper stage had two similar smaller windows to each side and more pinnacles.