Dunalley Street Primary School

The Dunalley Street Primary School was designed in 1857 by Henry Dangerfield, the Borough Surveyor. It is a red brick building with black engineering brick patterns, limestone ashlar dressings, wall and corner buttresses, and a stone-coped gabled Welsh slate roof.

The school was planned with an east-west range, featuring a gable facing Dunalley Street, and a slightly lower block extending north also facing Dunalley Street. Two further ranges extend at right angles westwards, forming a rear block. The building is constructed in a Tudor Gothic style.

The east elevation, facing Dunalley Street, shows the gable end of the east-west range with a five-light transomed full-height Middle Gothic window above a scrolled plaque displaying the school’s name. This is flanked by diaper work and surmounted by banding framing the arch. The lower right-hand range features full-height transomed windows set within a parapeted wall that interrupts the eaves course. The south elevation has tall, segmental-arched windows also interrupting the eaves line. The north elevation includes two Gothic dormers, one of which has been altered with the insertion of a 20th-century window above a mid-20th-century porch.

Internally, classrooms are separated by glazing-bar windows and matchboard partitions. The roof, originally open, is supported by naturalistic corbels in a C13 Gothic style and comprises glued laminated timbers, through-bolted for strength. It features arched braces supporting a tie-beam, decorative cast-iron spandrels, a king post with curved braces to the principal rafters, and stop-chamfered spine beams with run-out stops.

The school opened as the British School in February 1859 and is notable for the rare use of glued laminated timber in the 1850s, a period of innovation in construction techniques, particularly for wide-span roofs. The building presents an architecturally accomplished elevation to Dunalley Street.