Kelly College

Kelly College is a public school built between 1872 and 1874 by the architect C F Hansom, with a west wing added in 1897 by H J Snell. The building stands on Parkwood Road in Tavistock.

The structure is constructed of dressed Hurdwick stone with buff limestone bands and dressings. The roofs are slate with stone copes and feature diagonally-set brick flues to stone stacks. The design follows a Gothic Revival style throughout.

The college is arranged on an elongated plan with a main central range containing an axial corridor and a first-floor chapel (originally the Big School), flanked by a west wing incorporating a chapel and a long east range. Gabled rear wings connect via a covered passage to a dormitory block and the headmaster's house. The building is two storeys throughout, rising to attic level in the dormitory block.

The south-facing front elevation presents a composition of 5:6:5 bays. The central range has 2-light traceried windows articulated by full-height buttresses, while the outer wings are fenestrated with 3-light stone-mullioned and transomed Tudor-arched windows. An arched doorway is positioned to the left.

The west elevation of 1897 is double-gabled and symmetrical. It features a Tudor-style oriel window to the first-floor left and a 3-light Gothic window to the first-floor right, with tall offset buttresses flanking a central pointed-arched doorway topped with a Gothic overlight.

The rear elevation's outer wings adopt a Domestic Tudor style with some Gothic detail. The central range employs a more vigorous Gothic Revival treatment similar to the front elevation, dominated by a 3-storey central projecting bay containing a tall 3-light window, angle buttresses, and a ground-floor pointed-arched arcade with richly-carved Early Gothic style capitals to cylindrical piers. The covered passage connecting to the west block features similar capitals and pointed-arched arcades.

The headmaster's house and dormitory block is two storeys with attic space and large gabled dormers, built in Domestic Tudor style with sashes set in paired stone-mullioned Tudor-arched windows. A one-bay projecting wing to the south has square bay windows formed as angled buttresses. A large 3-light transomed stair window sits above an open timber porch.

Interior features in the west block include Minton tile floors, Gothic-style cornices and fireplaces, and panelled doors and shutters. The main school range contains ground-floor classrooms served by a rear axial corridor with corbelled beams. Two stairwells feature pointed arches and stone dog-leg stairs with ingeniously-formed arched buttress balustrades capped with newels.

At the top of the east stair is a pointed moulded arch with ballflower stops leading to the library. The library has a 4-bay hammer-beam roof with arch braces and cast-iron columns with bell capitals to the rear aisle.

The chapel, built as Big School, features shafts with finely carved Gothic capitals supporting a hammer-beam roof. It contains a large Tudor-style fireplace with armorial panels to the west, a tall panelled dado, a 20th-century Gothic-style reredos, and a tall pointed moulded arch with foliate capitals to two orders of shafts. The interior includes panelled doors and Tudor-style fireplaces throughout.

Hansom's original designs for the college were never fully realised. These were conceived on a grand scale and were clearly modelled on Clifton College in Bristol and Malvern College.