The Old School House

The Old School House, Longburton

Former village school with attached school master's house, now a village hall. Built in 1852, probably commissioned by the Earle-Drax family.

The building is constructed of coursed local stone with stone dressings in Tudor style. The roof features decorative clay tiles with raised copings to the gable ends and a central ridge stack of stone serving the master's house. Windows are largely mullioned and transomed (mullions only to those in the master's house), all fitted with metal casements.

The plan is T-shaped, with the main school room running parallel to the street frontage and the school master's house forming a cross wing immediately to the north. Single-storey twentieth-century extensions have been added to the rear but are not of special interest. A detached lavatory block stands immediately north of the school.

The principal east elevation faces the roadside. The school room comprises a three-bay single-storey range with the cross wing to the right. The façade features two tall flat-headed mullioned and transomed windows set below stone hood-moulds, and an entrance porch in the third bay. The porch contains a four-centred moulded doorway, probably retaining its original timber door with strap hinges. Above the doorway is a stone plaque carved with '1852'. To the left is a further plaque bearing the coat of arms of the Earle-Drax family, likely the school's benefactors. The two-storey cross wing has a two-light window to the ground floor and one to the first floor. The north elevation is plain with a doorway at the left end; a late-twentieth-century addition with hipped roof has been added towards the rear of the cross wing. The rear west elevation has been obscured by twentieth-century flat-roofed additions. At first floor in the cross wing is a two-light window that has been boarded over but retains its casement. The south gable wall displays a large three-light window; above is a projecting semi-circular plinth with an applied hood (the statue is missing). At the gable apex is a bellcote which retains its bell.

The small detached lavatory block to the north is single-storey, built in similar style with the same decorative roof tiles but with coursed rubble stone walls. It has a central round-headed doorway to the front east elevation with a flat-headed two-light casement window to either side. The south gable wall contains two doorways and a single-light window between them. The interior has been refurbished and is now used for storage; the building has undergone some alteration.

Internally, the school building is little altered, retaining original joinery and much of its plan form. The school house roof consists of trusses with tie beams, chamfered arch braces, and a single row of trenched purlins to either side, resting on stone corbels visible in the school room (the ceiling appears to be a later insertion). The master's house interior contains several fireplaces, although one on the first floor has been removed. The plain staircase is nineteenth-century, and the roof appears to have been strengthened.

The rubble stone boundary walls are largely complete and probably date to the school's original construction or to the nineteenth century.

The school closed in the 1960s and was subsequently sold by the Salisbury Diocesan Council of Education, converting to its present use as a village hall.