Hazelwell Boarding House

Hazelwell Boarding House is a Gothic Revival boarding house built in 1865–6 to the designs of William Hill Knight. It is constructed in English bond red brick with polychrome brick and ashlar detailing and dressings, including blue brick diaper work and strings. The building has tile roofs with brick stacks, being multi-gabled with steeply-pitched blocks and tall stacks to the housemaster's house.

The building was designed with the housemaster's house to the front east-facing block and a dormitory block to the rear. The housemaster's house comprises a double-depth block with an axial hallway providing access to an axial passage that runs along the rear south-facing dormitory block, which has a later extension to the west end and is returned at right angles to the north. The angle between the dormitory blocks and the rear of the housemaster's block is taken up by a common room, externally remodelled around 1960.

The exterior is in the Gothic Revival style, two storeys with attics. The three-bay double-gabled east front to College Road has a panelled door with sidelights and overlight recessed within an ashlar porch. This porch has a pointed moulded arch framing a trefoil sprung from foliate capitals and with foliate carving in the spandrels. There are plate-glass sashes throughout. The porch is flanked by two pairs of two-light transomed plate tracery windows, with ashlar keys to shallow-pointed polychrome heads. The first floor has three similar two-light windows, and there are gabled roof dormers. The left-hand return south gable has a canted bay window with 1:2:1 fenestration, including a carved floral motif to the tympanum of the central window, and a string course with corner gargoyles to the parapet. There is a two-light shoulder-headed attic window. The central bay of the left-hand return is recessed and is dominated by a tall two-light stair window with curvilinear tracery to its head. The left-hand bay has two-above three-light windows and a steep pyramidal roof with tall gabled dormers. Similar fenestration appears on the right-hand north return, the rear of which has a steeply-pitched pyramidal roof to the service area and adjoins the externally remodelled common room.

The boarding house to the rear has windows, mostly sashes, set under similar arched polychrome heads. There are eight bays to the left-hand south elevation, which has a doorway to its east end, and six to the east and west elevations of the block that extends to the west. Two-light casements are placed below the eaves, with all lintels running into a brick-modillioned cornice with a band below, to sill height, of dark brick framing cross-shaped panels of yellow brick. Attached to the rear left south-west is a taller three-storey block with glazing-bar sash windows, including a projecting first-floor bay window to the prefects' room in the left-hand return. The whole building is surrounded by a passageway, principally intended to provide light and air to the basement storey. The areas to the front of the ground-floor windows and the south elevation doorway are enclosed by finely-wrought iron railings, divided into panels which are curled to foliate ends.

The interior of the housemaster's house has decorative plaster cornices, the drawing room to the south-east being particularly ornate, and fireplaces in Gothic Revival and classical style. The fireplace in the dining room is a particularly fine example of the former. Original joinery includes panelled doors set in moulded architraves that have engaged shafting. The spacious stair hall has pointed arches spanning the load-bearing walls. The open-well staircase has chamfered balusters set to a closed string and with a moulded swept handrail. The stout newel post with roll-moulded arrises is carved with floral motifs. There is a stained glass window with Renaissance portrait medallions depicting the four seasons and a circular flower motif. An open-well service stair to the rear right has pyramidal newels and stick balusters to a closed string.

The dormitory block has an extensive basement service storey, its rooms having original doors and joinery including cupboards. There is an eclectic classical fireplace in the former butler's pantry. Pointed arches lead to passages, which have doorways with overlights to the boys' rooms. The common room has an arch-braced roof with shouldered posts from collar to truncated principal rafters at the apex framing a quatrefoil formed of cast iron with foliate scrolls. An open-well cast-iron stair with stick balusters at the south-west junction of the dormitory blocks provides access to all floors.

The Long Dorm, intended for junior boys and located on the upper storey, retains the original boys' cabins. The partition walls have chamfered posts and rails. The arch-braced roof has laminated timber arches, additionally strengthened by wrought-iron tension bracing. The Zoo dormitory is similar but smaller, lacking the original cabin partitions.

William Hill Knight was an architect who in his long career contributed to Cheltenham some of its most distinguished works of architecture, including the Synagogue of 1839, the Cemetery Chapels of 1864, and the Museum and Library of 1887. He was a highly versatile architect, and when commissioned by the Reverend Samuel Green to design a boarding house for Cheltenham Boys College, for whom he was later to design their swimming baths in College Baths Road, he chose the Gothic Revival style already chosen for the existing College buildings. In contrast to J. Wilson, the Bath architect who designed the first phase of the College in 1841, and who chose a Picturesque rendition of the Perpendicular style, Knight here worked in a typically High Victorian interpretation of Middle Pointed Gothic Revival. The red brick with polychromatic detailing combined with the use of plate tracery fenestration provides a clear sense of stylistic continuity. The composition is exceptionally well-handled, exhibiting through its use of studied asymmetry and the integration of tall stacks into the massing of the front block, with its complex roof massing, and its juxtaposition with the rear wing some of the characteristics later seen in the Domestic Revival movement. The result is a composition of distinctive quality and character, there being a clear separation between the front housemaster's block and the rear dormitory wing. The former is more ornate and benefits from fine polychromatic and carved stone detail, but the whole is unified by a stylistic unity of approach and a skilful use of mass and compositional form.

This use of High Victorian Gothic Revival reflects a clear understanding of the latest architectural trends. Some of its leading Gothic architects of the period, being held in high regard by the Anglican establishment, were also from the 1860s commissioned by Anglican public schools to design new school buildings and complexes in what was considered to be a muscular Christian style. In this context, Hazelwell is highly unusual, for rather than forming an integral part of a collegiate composition or group, such as G. E. Street's Denstone College, Staffordshire, or William White's additions to Marlborough School, Wiltshire, it was built as a private development by the first housemaster, Samuel Green, and formed part of an extensive development of boarding houses built for the expanding Cheltenham College, whose then principal, Dr Barry, intended to create a boarding house company.

Hazelwell is clearly the most architecturally distinguished of the group and, moreover, has retained its internal plan form and on the upper floor many of the partitions to the cabins set under arched laminated timber ribs. These appear, on the basis of available evidence, to be unusually complete survivals relating to boarding school life in the 19th century. Those at Downside Abbey, Somerset, provide an additional example. Laminated timber was developed in the early 19th century, firstly in bridge design in Germany and then for the wide spans needed for indoor riding schools in France. In England they were pioneered by the Newcastle architect Benjamin Green who used the technique for railway bridges on the east coast line near Newcastle, and the new church built at Cambo, Northumberland, in the 1840s.

In summary, Hazelwell comprises a fine example of a Gothic Revival villa and an unusually complete example of a public school boarding house.