St Brandon'S School For Girls

St Brandon's School for Girls

House, now school. Built in 1850 by architects J Foster and J Wood for Conrad Finzel, with later additions to the rear. The building is constructed of coursed rubble with ashlar dressings, featuring fishscale patterns to the slate roofs and stone stacks.

The main block follows a central-stairhall plan with rear service wings and library, executed in Jacobethan style. The building presents 2 storeys and an attic, arranged as a symmetrical 7-bay range. The outer bays project forward and are capped with shaped gables bearing finials, both linked by a single-storey loggia with open spandrels to an arcade, a triglyph frieze, and an openwork parapet with cresting over the central entrance. This entrance has flanking columns and panelled round-headed doors. The central and outer bays are framed by banded pilasters and string courses. A similar openwork parapet runs between the outer bays with a scrolled pediment to the centre.

The windows are stone-mullioned and transomed throughout. The central bays have 2-light windows; the outer bays have 3-light windows with scrolled pediments and cartouches. The ground-floor windows in the outer bays are curved bows with similar parapets. The right-hand return features a 3-bay arrangement and a large stair window of three two-light geometrical Gothic-style windows with diamond-leaded lights. This return also has a broken-pedimented door architrave with tapered pilasters and a shell tympanum. Further back on this side is a 5-bay arcade to a conservatory. The left-hand return has an arcaded porch set within the angle of a projecting bay with shaped gable, adjacent to a tower at the rear topped with a cupola and oculi to shaped dormers.

Interior features are extensive and richly detailed. The vestibule is panelled with corbels supporting segmental-arched ceilings. The grand doorway to the hall features a trefoiled arch framing a decorative iron tympanum over double doors, flanked by tapered pilasters on console brackets. The hall itself is panelled and contains a cantilevered-out balcony to the landing with a Jacobean strapwork balustrade, carved pendentives, and Ionic newels. The dog-leg stair features a Jacobean strapwork balustrade with similar newels and pendentives, and carved figures of Gothic knights holding lamps. The panelled ceiling is glazed to the centre and includes enriched cornices, pendants, and strapwork. Trefoil-arched arcades occupy each end of the hall, with tapered Ionic pilasters and console brackets. A Jacobethan-style fireplace with caryatids and fine decorative tiles stands in the hall. Ground-floor main rooms have richly treated panelled doors and shutters with decorative brass fittings, while other rooms contain a variety of classical and Jacobethan-style fireplaces with enriched and moulded cornices.

The library features fittings removed from Leigh Court, a Greek-Revival mansion of 1814 by Thomas Hopper. Two fine marble fireplaces in the library are carved with scenes of the serpent in the Garden of Eden. Bookcases throughout are framed by pilasters and friezes with stylised Ionic capitals to naturalistic brass plates, with two sets of panelled double doors at each end.

An adjoining room contains dentilled cornices, strapwork, and putti details, a lincrusta frieze, and an Elizabethan-style marble fireplace with caryatids. This fireplace sits within an ingle with flanking benches set against a panelled screen featuring carved Ionic pilasters and a turned newel. A projecting entablature with lions' masks adorns the strapwork frieze above, and a shell niche occupies a corner cupboard.

The house was formerly known as Clevedon Hall. Conrad Finzel, its original owner, made his fortune by inventing a vacuum device to evaporate moisture from sugar. The building was later occupied by Charles Hill, the Bristol shipbuilder, and subsequently housed St Brandon's School for Girls from 1945 to 1991.