Roedean School Main Buildings

Roedean School was established as a girls' school in 1897–98, with the principal building being a 150-metre-long range comprising a central school house flanked by boarding houses. Later additions of special architectural and historic interest include the chapel of 1905–06, and the art, music and library wing of 1910–11 with the headmistress's house. The original 1897–98 building was designed by John W Simpson; the later buildings are by Simpson and Maxwell Ayrton. The construction is red brick laid in English bond, roughcast with Bath stone dressings, and a tiled roof (recently renewed).

The original building is set out almost symmetrically, with the central school house flanked by boarding houses positioned forward on either side, creating an open quadrangle in the centre. The school house is loosely Jacobethan in style, while the boarding houses take their character from contemporary Arts and Crafts domestic architecture.

Exterior

The school house front has a seven-window range over three storeys and an attic. It is arranged with a central clock tower flanked by two gabled bays on either side, with staircase towers set back at either end. The plinth is of red brick. The clock tower has a two-storey canted and parapeted bay incorporating a round-arched entrance with a Gibbs surround to the archivolt. This is flanked by pairs of blocked Ionic columns carrying an entablature with pulvinated frieze and vase ornaments flanking a broken pediment bearing the school's emblem. All windows are flat-arched, with those either side of the entrance under the same entablature. Ground- and first-floor windows have mullions and transoms with dripmoulds; second- and attic-floor windows have dripmoulds only. The gables have stone bands running across at sill and lintel levels, a motif repeated elsewhere in the building.

The clock tower has a gilded clock at attic level, an embattled stone parapet, octagonal corner turrets with ogee lead caps, and a pyramidal roof. The staircase towers have stone quoins to the upper stages, a stone parapet, and an octagonal lead-covered cupola with ogee lead cap and finial. Steps lead up to the central entrance, flanked by short splayed balustrades.

Each boarding house consists of an asymmetrically gabled four-storey range running north–south and a two-storey range running east–west. They are grouped in pairs to the east and west of the school house, with the tall, asymmetrical gables at the outer end of either group. Each has a segmental-arched porch with hollow-chamfered mouldings and carved label stop, leading to a segmental-arched entrance. Beside the entrance is a two-storey canted bay of equal dimensions on all three sides, with a nine-light mullioned and transomed window to the ground floor, a nine-light mullioned window to the first floor, and a parapet embattled only at the centre. Upper windows are all mullioned, one having a central blank stone panel as if for an inscription. The two-storey range has brickwork to the ground floor with stone dressings to windows, a lean-to roof forming a canopy between bays, and a gabled staircase wing. A brick stack stands between the two ranges.

The returns of the eastern group of boarding houses have an external chimneystack at the south end with offsets and brick pilasters, and a single-storey canted bay with embattled parapet to the centre. The returns of the western group have the same details except that the base of the external stack has a gable form of brick imposed upon it.

The dining wing of 1963, attached to the west end of the main school buildings, is not of special architectural or historic interest.

Interior of the School House

The interior of the school house includes a vestibule with two pairs of Doric columns flanking the cross-passage, bronze lanterns to a short staircase balustrade, and a panel of circa 1900 listing the founders' names in gilded letters. The staircase rises in two flights, then one, with panelling to the outer walls and a balustrade of simplified Jacobethan character. The cross-passage on the first floor has a pair of Ionic columns distyle in antis. The hall at mezzanine level is relatively plain in character, with panelling inscribed with pupils' names, segmental arches in front of the windows, a south gallery, and a roof carried on composite semicircular trusses.

Art, Music and Library Wing

The art, music and library wing is rendered with stone dressings and a tiled roof, rising to three storeys with a fourth storey in the stair tower to the west. It is linked to the 1897–98 building by a broad segmental arch with a room over. There is a shallow, three-storey gabled wing to the east, whose ground- and first-floor windows are contained within a single stone architrave with blind arcading to the spandrels. Windows are Tudor-arched and flat-arched. The remainder of the south front has two slightly projecting gabled bays of one-window range, with a single-storey canted bay between them containing an eight-light window. The second-floor windows are set back behind an embattled parapet and have virtually continuous glazing. There are stacks on the pyramidally roofed corner tower and on either side of the eastern wing.

The headmistress's house is rendered with stone dressings and a tiled roof (recently renewed). The entrance front, facing south-east, has wings splayed to either side of the central flat-arched entrance with moulded architrave under a segmental arch, with Tudor-arched windows above flanked by pilasters. Each wing has a slightly canted two-storey bay with a transom to the ground-floor window and a deep parapet. There is a late 20th-century garage addition on the south front and a stepped brick stack to the rear.

The interior of the library has panelled walls incorporating seven book stacks and a large stone ingle-nook fireplace at the east end of unusual design: a flat-arched hearth with scalloped corners under a bracketed mantelshelf, flanked by a window on each side and set back under a broad bracketed lintel in the form of a triangular pointed arch so shallow as to be almost flat. This arch is enclosed within a large, introverted, eared and shouldered architrave that rises to ceiling height, with the ear and shoulder breaking inwards, giving room to small pilasters at the top corners.

The walls of the art room are covered with tiles executed by pupils in the 1930s and 1940s, many dated and signed. Most are decorated with stylised foliage in painted enamels, but one notable series of relief-moulded tiles depicts scenes in the life of Roedean School.

Chapel

The chapel is rendered with stone dressings and a slate roof. The east end has a central gabled section set slightly forward and flanked by buttresses, with an east window of Palladian form but with two mullions and a transom under the central round arch. The north side has the lower part rendered and the upper part in stone with clerestory windows, a modillion cornice, and gables over each of the four bays, reflecting the vaulting of the north aisle. The south side, much higher because of the fall in the ground, is detailed in the same way but without the gables.

The west end has two outer bays of one-window range and a central gabled section with a pair of round-arched windows to the narthex set back under a pair of segmental arches, with a bracketed balcony above, and a tall round-arched recess above the balcony whose face is decorated with a cross in stone. There is a bell tower with domed cupola to the south.

The interior of the chapel mixes English Classical with Byzantine elements in an unusual way. The nave walls are panelled in wood in a late 17th-century style to a height of about two metres, and the rest of the walls are covered with grey-white marble articulated with bands of golden-buff marble. The altar stands in a central curved recess in a marble, galleried screen articulated by pilasters carrying a full entablature and gallery with urns, and is flanked by flat-arched entrances with lunettes over, the spandrels filled with neo-Byzantine openwork ornament. A marble screen immediately in front of the east window repeats its Palladian arrangement, with mullions and transom.

The other windows are flat-arched and of two lights set in pairs with a lunette above, each pair being set back in a round-arched panel: two pairs of windows to the chancel, five pairs to the south, four to the north aisle. There are four bays to the nave, with an organ gallery over the narthex. The bays are articulated by pilasters on the south and antae on the north, with bases and capitals of bronze; the capitals are neo-Byzantine in style. The roof is barrel-vaulted in plaster with panelling and bay-leaf ornament. The round-arched entrance at the west end is set in a square architrave with a frieze inscribed 'AUDI FILIA TE VIDE'.

The south aisle is stepped up to just below the height of the panelling, forming a kind of gallery, and has transverse barrel vaults over each bay. The windows are all filled with 20th-century memorial glass, the most notable in design being the pair in the second bay from the east in the north aisle, both by Morris and Company, of 1917 and 1920.

Later Buildings

To the north of the eastern group of boarding houses is a two-storey range continuing the line of the art, music and library block, rendered to the ground floor with a late 20th-century first floor added. To the north of that is a two-storey rendered block with a foundation stone of 1927. These buildings are not of special architectural or historic interest.