27, Castle Street

This is a Sunday school, dating from 1894, designed by Lindley C Bridgman of Brayford. It is now used as offices. The building is constructed of cream-coloured brick with relieving arches of blue brick, stone dressings and patterned tiles, and has a slate roof with pierced red ridge-tiles.

The building is three storeys high, with a garret, and has a six-window front facing Castle Street and a three-window front facing Cross Street. Ground and second floor windows (except for the altered ground floor on the Cross Street front) have pointed or round arches, the heads of the openings being filled with solid panels, and are flat-headed windows divided into two lights by columns with pink sandstone shafts and foliated limestone capitals. The third floor has small paired windows, also with pointed arches, each window flanked by attached columns matching those below. The Cross Street front has a similar window in the gable, with a round light in the head of the arch.

The Castle Street front has a centrally placed dormer gable with five stepped, flat-headed openings containing louvres, and a panel of yellow patterned tiles in the apex of the gable. The return front to the left, facing down Castle Street, is a three-window range with a fourth window on the splayed corner. The window pattern is similar to the other fronts, although in the second storey the lights have round arches. The windows contain patterned coloured glass. A doorway on the corner has short attached columns and a round arch with a trefoiled fanlight above, and a stone plaque inscribed: THE FEAR OF THE LORD IS THE BEGINNING OF WISDOM.

Historically, these were the Jubilee Schools belonging to the Congregational Chapel in Cross Street. They replaced a slightly smaller building designed in a similar style and for the same purpose by RD Gould in 1858. In 1905, the schools had 16 teachers, 211 scholars, and 164 members of bible classes. The building features stop-chamfered spine beams with run-out stops.