Former Schoolmaster'S House

Former Schoolmaster's House

A schoolmaster's house built in 1895 by W. Talbot Brown in Queen Anne style, designed to serve Victoria Schools.

The building is constructed of red brick with stone dressings and a red tile roof. It is a two-storey structure with a rectangular plan, a gabled roof and tall chimney stacks.

The Gordon Road elevation features a round-arched porch with a moulded stone part-surround, a bracketed wooden canopy and a part-glazed recessed front door. The house retains original horned sash windows with 6 panes in the upper section. To the right of the porch are two windows with shaped brick hood moulds. On the first floor there are 3 windows with segmental brick hood moulds and stone sills. A stone string-course runs beneath the windows and a moulded brick eaves course marks the roofline.

The south-east elevation facing the playground has a shallow cross-gable with two sash windows on the ground floor and 3 windows on the first floor with segmental brick hood moulds and stone sills. The stone string-course continues along the length of this elevation and the gable has a moulded brick eaves course. The tall chimney stack to the left of the gable has curved offsets and stone insets. Beneath the eaves to the left is a small round window with a moulded stone surround.

The interior was not inspected.

Victoria Schools were designed by Walter Talbot Brown for the Wellingborough School Board and opened in 1895. At the same time he designed this schoolmaster's house at the top of the infants' playground, adjoining a terrace on the east side of Gordon Road. The 1888 Ordnance Survey map shows vacant fields in the area to the north of Mill Road. By the second edition map of 1900, Victoria Schools and the schoolmaster's house had appeared on the north side of the road, surrounded by small boot and shoe factories and terraced housing for workers whose children attended the schools. The unprecedented expansion of Northamptonshire towns such as Wellingborough in the late 19th and early 20th centuries was driven by wealth generated from boot and shoe production. This prosperity and civic pride are reflected in the high quality of buildings associated with Victoria Schools and the School Board's choice of architect.

Walter Talbot Brown had been articled to E. F. Law of Northampton from 1869 to 1874 and commenced independent practice in Wellingborough in 1876 or 1877. From 1880 he was in partnership with James William Fisher (1857-1936). He became an Associate of the Royal Institute of British Architects in 1880 and a Fellow in 1894. He collaborated with John Alfred Gotch on the seminal work Architecture of the Renaissance in England, published in six parts in 1891-94 and as a two-volume book in 1894. When Talbot Brown died in 1931, The Builder described him as 'a notable figure in the development of English architecture, particularly in the country district of Northampton'. His work was considered of 'a high and personal nature', although his 'retiring disposition' prevented it from being as well known as it should be. He designed many new houses, schools and churches in Northamptonshire, restored several medieval churches and was responsible for over thirty First World War memorials.