School Of Arts And Crafts

The School of Arts and Crafts, located at 1 New Street, was built in 1871 by A C Bothams in a free Gothic style, with the right-hand section originally serving as a Literary Institution. The left-hand section is a later annex in Tudor style, likely designed by the same architect around 1900. The former Institution features a narrow three-storey, three-bay front made of red brick, accented with blue ceramic brick bands that form pointed arches above the windows. The tympani are decorated with grey brick herring-bone patterns. The building has three gables, with the central one being large and steeply pitched, complemented by deep eaves and bargeboards. The upper floors contain three windows, with the central window being large and the side windows paired and tripartite, separated by brick pilasters and rendered colonettes. On the ground floor, there is a prominent central tripartite window with elaborately figured capitals and pilasters, flanked by slightly ogee arched doorways with foliate capped columns, although the right-hand doorway has been converted into a window.

The Tudor annex is also three storeys high, featuring a brick ground floor and plaster and timber-framed upper floors. It has a jettied central bay with full-width wood mullioned windows and wood pediments over the outer first-floor windows, along with overhanging eaves. The School of Arts and Crafts, along with Nos 21 to 49 (odd) and Nos 61, 63, and 67 to 75 (odd), forms a cohesive group.