The Old Grammar School And Forecourt Wall

The Old Grammar School and Forecourt Wall, Cirencester

A former grammar school, now a house, with late medieval origins dating between 1534 and 1560, with significant rebuilding in the 1640s and 1760s, and twentieth-century alterations and repairs.

The building is constructed of coursed squared limestone rubble with a rendered brick inner face to the rear wing on the right. The roof is of artificial stone slate to the front section with a parapet and coped verge on the right, with stone slate and Welsh slate to the rear. The stacks comprise a rebuilt brick stack at the left end, a rebuilt brick stack on a gable to the rear right, and an external stack to the gable end of the rear left wing with the top rebuilt in brick.

The medieval front range to the right (the solar range) was rebuilt in the 1640s, with a medieval wing to the rear right which was raised in the 1760s. There is a mid-sixteenth-century wing to the rear left and an addition to the rear right wing, with a further 1760s addition between the rear ranges.

The front elevation is single-storey and attic with a 3-window hall range to the left and a 2-storey, attic and cellar range to the right with 3 windows. The hall to the left has three windows of three lights each with ovolo-moulded stone mullions and transoms, three lights high, with leaded glazing and hoodmoulds, and three hipped dormers with 2-light glazing bar casements. The solar range to the right has on the first floor one 2-light ovolo-moulded stone mullion window with leaded glazing and hoodmould, and to the right two nineteenth-century 2-over-2-pane horned sashes with concrete lintels and stone cills. The ground floor has two 2-over-2-pane sashes in matching reveals to the right, and a twentieth-century plank door to the centre recessed within a medieval round-headed moulded stone surround with hoodmould and relieving arch. One hipped dormer has a 2-light timber casement. The side and rear elevations have scattered fenestration of eighteenth-, nineteenth- and twentieth-century glazing bar sashes and casements, with a gabled dormer to the rear right, a raking dormer to the rear left wing, and twentieth-century rooflights.

The interior contains a plank and muntin screen dividing the passage from the hall. The hall has seventeenth-century panelling from Kent inserted around 1948 and a twentieth-century fireplace. Three plastered beams with chamfers and run-out stops are visible. A jib door leads to the rear left, where there is one plastered beam with chamfer and run-out stop. The ground floor right has a late eighteenth-century stone chimneypiece with reeded pilasters with acanthus capitals, a frieze with festoon decoration and enriched cornice, and a plastered beam with chamfer, run-out stop with two notches, and plaster leaf decoration. An altered staircase incorporates 1640s pierced splat balusters with a stone spiral to the upper flight. The first-floor solar has heavy cross beams boxed out. A bathroom on the first floor at the centre occupies what was possibly a former gallery to the hall. A small part of the hall roof structure is visible in the passage to the first-floor rear, possibly part of an arch brace. An oak spiral staircase leads to the front right attic. A 2-bay butt-purlin roof of the seventeenth or eighteenth century covers the right front. The rear left wing has a 3-bay trenched purlin roof with curved principals, now not load-bearing. The cellar to the front right contains two heavy chamfered beams.

An attached forecourt wall to the left, approximately five metres high, has a stone slate capping. Ramps descend to the front with ashlar coping approximately two metres high, ramping up to approximately 2.5 metres high at the centre over a pair of boarded studded doors with applied mouldings and a ball finial, and ramping up to the right end to approximately 2.5 metres high with a twentieth-century plank door matching those to the front in the right return.

The medieval range was possibly constructed originally as a civic building, such as a manorial court, and became a school in 1458, 1507 or 1534, certainly in school use by 1611. The wing to the rear left was constructed between 1534 and 1560 under the Elizabeth Tolley bequest. The poor state of repair in the 1590s led to the rebuilding of the 1640s, when the upper school was created by inserting a floor in the great hall to form the present attic, and the range to the front right was extensively reconstructed. The medieval wing to the rear right was raised in the 1760s and a further range was added between the rear wings.