Clock House, Stover School

Clock House, Stover School

This is a stable block belonging to Stover House, now converted to classrooms. Built circa 1830, probably for the eleventh Duke of Somerset, it is constructed of Carboniferous limestone ashlar with some slatestone and brick under a dry slate roof.

The building forms a large Neo-classical quadrangle of stabling, coach houses and associated structures, built on sloping ground. The front (south) elevation is symmetrical and two storeys high, with three storeys at the rear (north-west). The entrance range features a higher centrepiece gatehouse breaking forward slightly, flanked by pavilions formed by the gable ends of the side ranges. Two rendered axial stacks rise from this elevation.

The entire front elevation shares a plinth and first floor sill-band which becomes imposts to a high round-headed arch and returns along the sides of the carriageway. This archway has a key-block and an echinus moulded cornice completes the first stage. The second stage is square on plan with two offsets, clasping pilasters and a central circular clockface. Above this sits a three-step base to a square cupola with clasping pilasters and four round-headed arches with raised architraves and key-blocks. A simple eaves cornice and low-pitched pyramid slate roof with lead-roll hips culminate in a ball-finial carrying a wrought-iron standard stayed by four scrolls. On the very top is a weather vane of fox and hounds topped by a ducal coronet on a cushion.

The terminating pavilions have low-pitched gables and tripartite hornless timber sash windows, those to the ground floor with eight panes and those above with two panes over four, both with flat lintels. The remaining windows are sashes with 16 panes on the ground floor and four panes over eight on the first floor. The side elevations are of limestone rubble with some original 16 pane sashes remaining, though later twentieth-century insertions are present.

The ground falls away steeply to the rear (north-west), which has a symmetrical three-storey range of seven windows with the centre bay projecting slightly under a low-pitched gable. The basement is of slatestone rubble with a plinth at window sill level, all openings having cambered heads. A wide central doorway is flanked by three windows each side, the outer ones blind. Basement windows are 16 pane sashes. The tall ground floor windows have sashes of eight panes over twelve, with a continuous sill band. First floor windows are a mixture of late nineteenth and twentieth-century casements.

Entry to the courtyard is through a tall two-bay carriageway with a thick outer round arch and thinner inner one; between the two is another arch of brick painted to simulate the limestone. Blind arches flank the side walls with two twentieth-century doorways. Two gates hung on the outer arch each have six beaded flush panels with ramped copings. The floor of the carriageway and yard is of granite setts draining to runnels.

Within the quadrangle, the north face of the south (entrance) range and the south face of the north (rear) range are single-storey arcades. The entrance range arcade was infilled in the twentieth century. Two brick round arches on stone piers and impost blocks sit either side of the gateway. Opposite is an open single-storey full-width brick arcade of seven bays. Over the centre arch is a sash window between clasping pilaster strips, with the lower gable above possibly altered. Behind this arcade are five pairs of boarded carriage doors and a pedestrian door in the return at each end.

The inward faces of the side (east and west) ranges are symmetrical two-storey, four-window fronts with a central slightly projecting bay under a low-pitched gable. The first floor has a loading door in a plain aedicule on brackets with blind walling below. Windows are 16 pane sashes. Twentieth-century changes include a central doorway to the west range and a flight of external concrete steps to the first floor door of the east range.

The interiors and clock mechanism were not inspected. A twentieth-century flat-roofed extension and conservatory on the south face are excluded from listing. This is a good and externally almost complete stable block, probably built shortly after the eleventh Duke of Somerset purchased Stover in 1829. It replaced the old stables that previously stood east of the house.