Badminton School And Attached Wall And Doorway

Badminton School is a mid-18th century house, extended in the mid-19th century, and now used as a school. The building is constructed of rendered material with limestone dressings, limestone ashlar, squared, coursed Carboniferous rubble, and has a slate hipped roof. It is planned on a double-depth format and displays a Mid Georgian style with a Jacobethan-style extension.

The front of the building comprises a two-story, two-window range attached to a two-story, two-window range dating back to the 19th century. The earlier part of the house has a rendered parapet wall, openings with keyed architraves, a right-hand door, and a central canted bay with fluted angle pilasters. It features a six-pane sash window on the first floor, with the remaining windows being 20th-century casements. The 19th-century addition on the left has a rubble plinth, quoins, a cornice to the ground and first floors, a parapet, and tall round finial columns to each corner. A porch on the right features paired, attached three-quarter columns, round fluted ones on the interior, an entablature, large gadrooned corner urns, a panelled parapet, and a Tudor-arched doorway with a two-leaf, ten-panel door adorned with anthemia and a gadrooned over-panel. Mullion and transom windows with ovolo mouldings and metal casements are also present.

The left side of the building projects forward, featuring tripartite windows, with the outer ones on the first floor being blind, and a Dutch gable with round panels to a keyed oculus and blind balustrade. The left return has a similar projecting section, with a full-height central semicircular four-light bow with outer windows, and paired six-light windows, blocked to the ground floor; it is topped with a plain parapet with central and flanking round panels. A central, square, three-stage tower set at an angle has open semicircular arches flanked by three-quarter Doric columns to an entablature, and semicircular-arched French doors and a fanlight. It also incorporates narrow first-floor windows with raised surrounds, oculi on the third floor, and a square ogee copper dome with a weather vane. The rear elevation features a similar left-hand wing, and twelve-light windows with flanking narrow windows, as found on the tower, with a gable above.

The interior of the 18th-century portion includes an axial passage with a semicircular panelled arch and a dogleg winder service staircase with a banded rail and curtail. The 19th-century section features a large entrance hall with semicircular arches to each side and grotesque keys, a ceiling divided by moulded beams, and a central stair hall with an Imperial staircase with turned balusters, square newels, and a ceiling rose. A stone Jacobean-style fireplace in the northeast room incorporates triple Ionic columns to the surround and overmantel, an entablature and cresting, a central heraldic panel depicting the City, flanking statues in niches, strapwork decoration, a cornice and frieze, doors with round-topped panels, and marble fireplaces are found in the other downstairs rooms and former bedrooms.

An attached rubble wall extends approximately 10 meters from the southeast corner, incorporating a Jacobethan-style decorative doorway with raised quoins and a pediment. The building is described as decorative and well-detailed.