Ashton Gate Junior School And Attached Perimeter Walls, Gates And Railings

This is a late 19th-century board school, now a junior school, constructed in 1876 with an addition in 1881. Designed by F Bligh Bond and CF Hansom, it’s located on Ashton Gate Road in Bedminster, Bristol. Built of squared Pennant rubble with freestone dressings, the roof features double Roman and fishscale tiles, as well as decorative ridge tiles.

The school is composed of a main block with projecting wings at each end, and an 1881 block set at a right angle on its North Road side. It is executed in a Free Gothic style. The principal south-east elevation, facing Greenway Bush Lane and overlooking a playground, features a right-hand wing with a large lancet and tracery window. To the left, two buttresses frame tall mullioned windows and a wide panel bearing the inscription "BRISTOL SCHOOL BOARD / ASHTON GATE SCHOOL 1876", with a tile-hung dormer above. An entrance wing to the left has a pointed doorway with a moulded archivolt and an octagonal turret clad in fishscale tiles. The north-east elevation, facing Ashton Gate Road, incorporates a doorway into a yard with a Caernarvon arch and basketwork brick infill above a lancet window; a plainer doorway sits to the right. Windows are generally 1-, 2-, or 3-light, with 2-centred heads and gables. The main hall’s gable features a stepped window with trefoil heads and barge-boards, accompanied by a wide tile-hung dormer incorporating three smaller ones to its right. A chapel is situated in the east corner, a single-storey range with a three-window front and a twelve-foil rose window in the gable. Quatrefoil-headed windows rise through the eaves into dormers. Additional features include a laundry block in the south-east corner and an open, arcaded coal store.

The 1881 block, facing North Street, contains a large hall with two projecting classroom blocks to the south-west. This single-storey structure has varied fenestration, with mullioned and transomed windows, 4-centred heads, and a top-lit rectangular lantern with a steep turret roof. The roofs generally have a horizontal pattern of glazed tiles. A garage range on the south side is a six-bay open structure with braced posts and decorative ridge tiles.

Internally, the school features plain wainscotting and fireplaces with Gothic moulded surrounds; the fireplace at the end of the 1881 hall has stout moulded columns supporting a wide Tudor chimneypiece. The main hall and chapel roofs are supported by extended braced collar trusses resting on carved corbels.

Subsidiary features consist of attached rubble walls, gates, and railings to the south, east, and west sides. The school is considered the largest and most significant building within a group of notable Board School structures.