Offwell School

Offwell School is a building constructed in 1840 by the Reverend Edward Copleston, who was the Bishop of Llandaff and Dean of St Paul’s. It features blocks of squared flint arranged in courses with Beerstone details, although the west end wall is plastered, suggesting that the rest may have been originally as well. The school has a stone stack with a narrow octagonal chimney shaft made of Beerstone and a slate roof, which may have been thatched initially.

The school has a small one-room plan and is situated on a terrace above the road, facing south. It has a front doorway with a porch at the right (east) end, and there is a second room at the back in an integral lean-to, along with a secondary cloakroom. The building is single storey and designed in the Tudor Gothic style.

The exterior features a regular but not symmetrical two-window front with tall Beerstone mullion and transom windows that have hoodmoulds. The gabled porch at the right end has a two-centred outer arch with a ribbon plaque above it inscribed with the words: "The fear of the Lord is the beginning of Wisdom." The front doorway is a simpler two-centred arch containing a plank door. The roof is gable-ended, with shaped kneelers and coping. The left gable is topped by the chimney shaft, while the right gable features a gabled bellcote. The right (east) end has two more mullion and transom windows with hoodmoulds, the right one being smaller and leading to the lean-to. Above the larger left window is a plaque with a bishop's head in a quatrefoil panel, and its hoodmould has carved human head label stops. There is another similar carved plaque on the left end.

The interior was not inspected. In front of the school, the terrace is supported by a flint rubble wall with plain coping, topped with 20th-century railings. The gate posts are made of Beerstone ashlar, square in section with pyramid caps. The school is part of a group of listed buildings in the center of Offwell, most of which were also built by Bishop Copleston.