Blue School And Portway Annexe

Blue School and Portway Annexe, Wells

A former girls' school, now a further education annexe to the 20th-century Blue School on another site. Designed by H Dare Bryan and dated 1900, with substantial additions from 1913.

The building is constructed of squared local conglomerate rubble with ashlar bands and dressings, with a plain clay tiled roof and ashlar chimney stacks set diagonally on stone bases.

The plan is complex, with vigorous Art Nouveau detailing, particularly around the main entry. The first part of the building comprises a central corridor with three large teaching rooms, staff and auxiliary accommodation, with the principal entry at the south-west corner. The later additions along the north and east sides include further classrooms and a small returned wing with formerly open store or cycle shed, enclosing a playground to the south.

The building is single storey throughout, with steep pitched roofs, mainly gabled, but with a central element over the first range featuring a hipped roof and cupola. The front to Portway is in three parts. At the centre is a double-gabled unit with large arched openings over timber lights with a lunette of small-paned glazing on four-light casements with transom and horizontal bars. There are bold conglomerate voussoirs with triple ashlar keystones. Battered corner buttresses rise to the flush sill-band level, with further bands at the springing line and above the voussoirs. The deep gable eaves have purlin brackets with a small carved heart cut through. At the valley is the original cast-iron downpipe on brackets with a decorative broad hopper-head. Set back from the gables is a lateral ridge to a hipped roof, with a central wooden cupola having a lead roof, finial and weathervane. The cupola sits on eight unfluted Doric columns with entablature having triglyphs and dentils, all on a square base.

To the right is a stack. To the left, set back, is a similar gable over stone chamfer-mullion two-four-two-light stepped casements with transom. The masonry is less carefully executed than in the earlier work, though detail is broadly similar. To the right, set back, is a highly decorative lower unit with flat leaded roof. At the corner is a sharp lead finial above an octagonal turret with panelled surfaces and lead cupola to a concave curved cornice.

There are small stone ovolo-mould casements with flat three-centred heads to the lights under a moulded cornice; the leading to the lights is in Art Nouveau patterns. At the centre is a raised segmental pediment over a fine carved cartouche including the date 1900, three cherub heads and the motto RECTA CERTA. This returns with similar detail to the south, with main double entry doors featuring characteristic panelling, dentils and glazing under a deep moulded segmental head on deep splayed jambs. To its right is a two-light casement with hollow-mould mullion. Dressings and splayed corner buttress are as in the section to the left.

The south front has a Dutch gable including a raised element with turned stone balusters and two pinnacles over a three-light chamfer-mullion casement with cornice and pediment with egg and dart. The lower part has a splayed headband to three- and two-light casements with ovolo-mould members and three-centred heads. At the right-hand end are steps down to a boiler room.

The east front has two pairs of gables with arched lights as on the Portway front, including the central downpipe with hopper-head. Set back in the valley is a small square ventilating turret with lead capping on a splayed tiled apron. To the left is a slightly set-back unit, and at the ridge here is a large stack with four diagonal shafts.

The long wing across the rear has a hipped roof with deep slopes swept at the eaves. This includes two three-light hipped dormers above three-light casements each side of a central open gabled porch with a 1913 date-stone. Returned at right angles to this is a small wing, the first part in rubble with three- and one-light openings; the second part was a former open store with timber posts, the openings now filled and rendered but the posts exposed. There is a stack between the two parts. The long north wall, directly facing Lovers' Walk, is detailed with stone-mullioned casements similar to the north gable on the Portway front.

The interior, especially of the 1900 range, retains much original detailing, including panelled and glazed doors. The central corridor, with glazed brick dado to the walls in the administrative section, has timber partitions to the classrooms with arched openings echoing those in the outer walls. The main hall has a complex raised panelled ceiling and matchboard dado. The library features a deep coved cornice and central flitch beam. The small committee room has a window to the north, formerly the outer wall, now opening into a corridor. At a junction in the corridor is a small roof-light with tinted glass on a small-pane skirt.

This building is very characteristic of Bryan Dare's imaginative designs and is especially interesting not only for its exterior but because it retains more of the interior detailing than is usual in buildings of this type.