St Mary De Crypt Grammar School

St Mary de Crypt Grammar School is a two-storey building with attic, located on the east side of Southgate Street in Gloucester. Founded in 1539 by Joan Cooke and entrusted to the Corporation of the City in 1540, it was sold to the Parish of St Mary de Crypt in 1862. The building was restored in 1862 by Medland and Maberley, with further restoration in 1880. It now serves as a church meeting room and Sunday School.

The building is constructed of ashlar on its street front, with red brick and stone details at the rear. An ashlar stack with a circular brick shaft has been added to the front, and a brick lateral ridge stack with two tall diagonal shafts stands to the left. Three 19th-century gabled dormers occupy the rear, and the roof is slate.

The plan comprises a range parallel with the street containing four bays and a wider bay at the north end. This wider bay incorporates a carriageway leading to St Mary's Lane, with the entrance doorway to the former schoolroom situated within the carriageway on a cross wall to the right. The south end of the range abuts the nave of the Church of St Mary de Crypt.

The exterior elevation is defined by buttresses with weathered offsets. A crowning string course runs below the eaves. At the centre of the four bays to the right, a buttress from first-floor level supports a wider chimney stack with moulded corbelling on each side and capped by weathered offsets. The wider left-hand end bay features a carriageway entrance with continuous moulding to the jambs and a Tudor arch. The arch is framed by a hoodmould with diamond stops on the sides, and armorial shields occupy the spandrels.

On the ground floor of each of the four bays to the left is a three-light stone-mullioned window with arched lights and a flat hoodmould returned on the sides with diamond stops. Above the archway to the left is a canted oriel window supported on a moulded corbel base, with a string course at sill level and a weathered head. The oriel has three arched lights to the front and a single arched light to each side. On the front of the oriel is a stone panel carved with the coat of arms of King Henry VIII. On the first floor of each of the four bays to the left are 19th-century three-light windows with details similar to those on the ground floor, all replacing sashes inserted in the 18th century.

At the rear, facing the churchyard, the east wall is red brick with ashlar buttresses and offsets. A moulded stone carriageway arch stands to the right. In each bay to the left are stone-mullioned three-light windows on each floor. Above the carriageway arch is a two-light window, and to the right, lighting the stairs, is a single-light window, all with details similar to those on the street front. Above the north bay to the left is a timber-framed gabled dormer with barge boards and a pair of casements. To the left are two triangular dormers with fixed lights.

The interior includes a timber-framed partition within the carriageway to the left, with a doorway to stairs leading to the room above, originally the schoolmasters' room. An entrance doorway on the right is set in a stone rectangular frame with moulded stone jambs and a Tudor arch. The four bays to the right contain the former schoolroom, believed originally to have been full height and probably divided in the 17th century by the insertion of a floor with exposed transverse and central lateral beams supported by three timber posts. At the north end of the lower room is early 17th-century panelling. On the first floor are similar chamfered beams and vestiges of a 16th-century ashlar fireplace with an adjacent spiral stair behind modern coverings.

The roof is a 5-bay tenoned single-purlin roof with cambered tie beams featuring plain chamfer and vestiges of wind braces to the lower tiers. Most trusses are double raking strut trusses with collar, and coupled rafters occupy the ridge.

The building was used by the Sunday School founded by Robert Raikes. The brickwork is notable for being an early example of its use in this region.