Shaftesbury Hall

Shaftesbury Hall is a training college built in 1869 in Cheltenham. It is constructed of red brick with bands of blue brick and Bath stone dressings, with Welsh slate hipped roofs and two tall brick ridge stacks with cornices. The design is relatively plain but influenced by Ruskinian Venetian Gothic. The building has a U-shaped plan, with a central block projecting forward and matching wings that form an internal courtyard.

The three-storey front has a 7-bay facade, with a 1-5-1 window arrangement; the outer bays are gable ends of the rear wings. The front has paired 1/1 and 2/2 sash windows to the outer four bays, a triple window to the centre and recessed sides. Windows feature pointed heads to the ground and first floors, using alternating coloured voussoirs, a continuous hoodmould to the ground floor, and Caernarvon arches to the second floor. Chamfered sills and brick mullions are also present, with a continuous drip mould over the ground and first floors. The central entrance has a stone Venetian porch with paired columns and foliated capitals, and a part-glazed door with sidelights and pointed overlight. There is a dentil cornice supported by heavy brackets. The left wing has 8 bays and the right wing has 12 bays, both predominantly with paired windows. The courtyard elevations have been slightly altered.

The interior is reportedly simple, with a straightforward staircase. Originally containing classrooms on the ground floor and dormitories above, it is now partitioned. The ceilings feature stop-chamfered spine beams with run-out stops, supported by stone corbel brackets.

Shaftesbury Hall was originally built as the women's hall for the Church of England teacher training college, and was used as such from 1869 to 1961. It represents an early purpose-built building for women's education and is contemporary with Girton College, Cambridge. The building occupies a prominent corner site and forms part of a group of notable Victorian buildings in the Regency new town and includes the Church of St Matthew, the Library, Museum and Art Gallery, Clarence Street, and Electricity House, St George's Place. The attached hall to the south-west is not included as part of the listing.