Canford School

CANFORD SCHOOL

Large country house, now boarding school. Built 1825–36 by Edward Blore for William Ponsonby, Lord de Mauley. Partly remodelled and considerably extended 1848–1853 by Sir Charles Barry for Sir John and Lady Charlotte Guest. Altered 1873–76 by David Brandon and further extended 1888 by Romaine Walker and Tanner. Extensive 20th-century alterations made for Canford School.

White brick in Flemish bond with Portland and Bath limestone dressings, slate roofs and white brick internal stacks. Extended courtyard plan in Tudor style with many other references. Picturesque composition chiefly of two storeys and attic with towers rising to four storeys.

The entrance front to the north features a large projecting four-storey porch tower to the left end, known as the Victorian Tower and Barry's chief contribution to the exterior. This has square turrets to three corners, supported to front by offset angle buttresses and a taller octagonal stair turret to the rear left corner. The bottom stage is open on three sides to form a porte-cochère with many-moulded and shafted archways with four-centred heads and blank tracery to spandrels containing shields of arms in quatrefoils. A stone quadripartite vault inside has ridge ribs and tiercerons, closely based on the crossing vault of Beverley Minster but with a large circular stone monogram panel instead of a bell-hole to the centre. The arches are surmounted by Royal arms to the north side and Guest arms to the east and west sides. Three-storey oriels corbelled out over shields of arms have battlemented parapets. Similar parapets crown the turrets, which rise above the tower roof, with the stair turret higher than the rest. A square bell tower occupies the other end of the entrance front, breaking forward slightly, with a Perpendicular doorway to the ground floor, a tall stone mullion and transom window above, and a two-light window to each side of the top storey with cusped Y-tracery and pointed head projecting above a string course continued over them as hoodmoulds. A battlemented parapet steps up over the window heads with heraldic beasts bearing standards at the corners, enclosing a ridged stone sloping base to an octagonal bell turret. The bell turret has a fanciful double-slope roof with tall finial and weather vane. A five-window front between the towers has tall stone mullion and transom windows to the ground floor, two-light stone mullion windows to the first floor flanking a central oriel of Bath stone probably inserted by Brandon, and three attic gables punctuating a coped parapet with one-light attic windows in chamfered stone surrounds.

The garden front to the south has a varied composition of full-height bay windows and a higher octagonal turret with garden doorway to the left of centre. A similar, somewhat smaller, turret rises to the rear left of the garden front range, which projects beyond the left side elevation. A long two-storey and one-storey and attic wing, the former billiard room and smoking room, added in 1888, projects to the west of the entrance range. The whole composition has a picturesque skyline of traceried and battlemented parapets and stone-coped attic gables around a taller hall roof with seven-light gable windows with Perpendicular tracery and four-centred heads.

The interior is rich in architectural detail. The long gallery has an Elizabethan-style ribbed plaster ceiling, linenfold panelling and a white marble Italian Renaissance-style hooded fireplace, probably installed in the late 19th century. The garden porch has similar panelling and an important chimneypiece and overmantel of Biancone with contrasting panels of deep pink veined marble, signed to the bottom of the overmantel "Pegrassi Salesio di Verona facie 1866". Piers flanking the fireplace and overmantel surround are finely carved in relief with hanging drops of game, chiefly fish and fowl. Salesio Angelo Pegrassi was employed at Kingston Lacey, where the architect Bassy also worked. The drops at the head of the Marble Staircase at Kingston Lacey, dated 1846, are comparable to the carving at Canford.

The Headmaster's Secretary's Office, formerly Lady Charlotte's room, has three-quarter height panelling, doors and doorcases of fine re-used late 15th and early 16th-century continental carved woodwork with Flamboyant blank tracery panels, coats of arms and figures of saints. A carved wood chimneypiece and overmantel incorporate woodwork brought from a house near Salisbury, with Ionic columns on openwork bases flanking the fireplace and Corinthian columns to the overmantel and upper tier, dated 1625, with Royal arms of Charles I to the centre flanked by round-arched panels. The columns have strapwork ornament including the double-headed eagle crest of the City of Salisbury.

The Headmaster's study, formerly a boudoir, has a gilded plaster coved cornice and plaster ceiling in Regency style inset with 18th-century-style painted cartouches. Panelling and chimneypiece that belonged with this interior were removed before sale to the school.

The hall contains a splendid five-bay arch-braced collar truss roof resting on carved stone corbels with ornamental arch bracing to the wall plate, two tiers of arch-braced purlins and a ridge piece, all with polychromatic decoration. Armorial stained glass by Hardman from 1850 fills the west gable window. Windows are continued below the transom by blank lights filled with niches having nodding ogee canopies and decorated by full-length historical figures in mosaic. Renaissance-style panelling lines the lower walls. A carved wood screen and gallery to the west end are in similar style. A large stone chimneypiece occupies the centre of the east wall opposite, with a Tudor-arched moulded fireplace opening, carved spandrels, a frieze of shields in quatrefoils and a ridged stone hood. The fireplace is tiled inside and has an original grate with Tudor royal arms to the fireback and fire-dogs of cast-iron and brass with a large Tudor rose encircled by garlanded briars, possibly designed by A.W. Pugin.

The library has original Renaissance-style carved wood fitted bookcases, green damask wall-hangings in poor state and original curtain pelmets. An important Louis XV chimneypiece of white marble with ormolu mounts features a fireplace opening flanked by console terms with fine ormolu Chinese lion-dog heads. Similar consoles occupy the sides, with ormolu decoration to the flutes of the consoles, fireplace opening and frieze. This is possibly an original 18th-century piece re-used. A mid-19th-century cast-iron grate and curved polished cast-iron fender complete the interior.

The drawing room and dining room have been dismantled. The Staircase Hall features a grand carved wood stair beginning in one flight and returning in two to a landing gallery, with fat twisted balusters having Corinthian capitals and bulbous acanthus feet. Renaissance-style carving adorns the newel posts, panelling and pilasters at first-floor level and the frieze they support. A pointed tunnel-vaulted ceiling is divided into square panels framing rosettes and incorporating top lighting. Mosaic panels occupy either end of the roof. A stained-glass staircase window displays heraldry and a figure of Queen Victoria. Fine bronze Renaissance-style candelabra stand to the major newel posts. Open-well back staircases have scrolled flat balusters in Rococo style and carved tread ends; the balusters may be 19th-century and re-used.

Crown Dormitory, formerly the bedroom used by the Prince of Wales when a guest at Canford, retains a coroneted tester from the former bed.

Canford Manor was sold by the Guest family in 1923 to become Canford School, a boys' public school.