Air Balloon Hill Council Schools, Infant School

BRISTOL

ST67SW HILLSIDE ROAD, St George 901-1/56/1839 (North side) Air Balloon Hill Council Schools, Infant School

GV II

Infant school. 1905. By Latrobe and Weston. Pennant rubble with limestone ashlar dressings, and double Roman tile hipped, gabled roofs. A central hall with range of classrooms to the right and hall and service blocks to the left. Art Nouveau style. An asymmetrical group with ashlar bands to cills, lintels and in between, and coped gables. The hall has gabled ends with a large Venetian window with 2-centred arched middle window, side dormers and a square ridge cupola with angle buttresses and a copper dome. In front is a single-storey block, with a right-hand doorway with a heavy, weathered lintel, and a left-hand porch with segmental-arched doorway flanked by round piers with domed tops. To the right is a projecting gable with a tall central segmental-arched window and lower flanking flat-headed ones, separated by shallow buttresses, with blind oculi above; to the right return is a range of 3 similar gables. To the left of the hall projects a 3-storey service block with a hipped roof, corbel table, a pair of semicircular first-floor windows and narrow rising stair lights to the left. The left return is a 15-window range, with a gable as the opposite side to the rear, 2 groups of 4 windows to a tall central hall with high, paired half dormers and a half-hipped roof, and 4 ground-floor windows to the front end. 4/4-pane sashes. INTERIOR: Art Nouveau-styled hammer beam roof to the central hall. Part of a group with the Junior School (qv) and Instruction Centre (qv), and sharing many details with them. A fine composition by one of the few Bristol architects to experiment with Art Nouveau. (Mowl T: To Build The Second City: Bristol: 1991-: 82).

Listing NGR: ST6322373473