Air Balloon Hill Council Schools, Junior School

BRISTOL

ST67SW HILLSIDE ROAD, St George 901-1/56/1841 (North side) Air Balloon Hill Council Schools, Junior School

GV II

Junior school. 1905. By Latrobe and Weston. Pennant rubble with limestone ashlar dressings, and double Roman tile hipped, gabled roofs. 2 similar groups with central halls and ranges of classrooms to each side. Art Nouveau style. Asymmetrical groups with ashlar bands to cill, lintel and between, and coped gables. The SE block has a hall with gabled ends, large Venetian windows with a 2-centred arched middle window, side dormers and a square ridge cupola with angle buttresses and a copper dome. In front a pair of gables has tall central and lower flanking flat-headed windows separated by shallow buttresses, with segmental pediments to the tops of the gables over ashlar panels inscribed AIR BALLOON HILL to the left and COUNCIL SCHOOLS to the right, in Art Nouveau-style lettering. To the left return is a range of 3 plain gables with segmental-arched heads to central windows with lower flanking windows. To the right return is a single-storey block with a left-hand doorway with notched lintels on corbels flanked by round piers; toward the rear are 2 gables as the left return, separated by a parapeted section with a right-hand doorway under a heavy weathered lintel, and central raised window with segmental-arched head and a shallow gabled parapet above. Attached to the NE corner is a similar group, with a central hall and ranges of 3 gables to each side; a single-storey front block has a left-hand segmental-arched doorway with round piers with domed tops, and a right-hand doorway with a heavy, weathered lintel; left-hand 2-storey service block with parapet and pyramidal roof, and first-floor window with segmental-arched recessed ashlar lintel. INTERIOR: Art Nouveau-styled hammer beam roofs to the central halls. Part of a group with the Infant 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