Gymnasium Immediately South Of Foxhole School

Gymnasium. Built between 1933 and 1934 by W E Lescaze of Howe and Lescaze of America, for Dartington School, and constructed by Staverton Builders. It is a building of rendered brick with a steel or concrete frame, featuring concrete coping to parapets concealing a flat roof. The plan is rectangular. The main space is a large gymnasium hall, with a gallery at the north end accessed by a rectangular tower on the north west corner. This tower rises above the roof level to provide access to the roof, originally intended for outdoor recreation. Beneath the gallery are locker rooms, lavatories, and showers in a stone block. A lower block to the east housed an exercise room, and a staff room sits near the north east entrance, all designed in an International Modern style.

On the east and west sides, there are six high-level, rectangular windows with steel frames and large panes of glass. Double doors are positioned to the right on each side; those on the east have circular lights and a porch with a reinforced concrete canopy and a thin steel support and rendered side wall. Two louvred ventilators are on the south end. The north west corner features a stair turret that interlocks with the main block and extends above the roofline, with a doorway leading to the roof, an external doorway at its base, and two windows above.

Inside, the walls are whitewashed brick, and the floor is hardwood. The gallery at the north end juts into the gymnasium and is faced in plywood with wire grille viewing windows. Plywood double doors, one with round viewing windows, are present. The flat roof issupported on five transverse rolled steel joists (RSJs) resting on concrete piers between the high-level windows; a heating radiator is situated below each window. The gymnasium equipment includes wooden wall bars on each side, adjustable exercise bars with pulley mechanisms, and climbing ropes that can be drawn out across the gymnasium. The gymnasium was originally a freestanding building, but is now connected to Foxhole School by a post-war two-storey building to the north and a single-storey building to the east.