St Audrie'S School

St. Audrie's School is a country house, largely rebuilt and extended between 1835 and 1870. Parts of the stable block, the service end, and a section of the North front were originally constructed in the 1830s and 1840s by Richard Carver, with the remaining work by John Norton, and built by William Shewbrooks of Taunton. The facade is faced with ashlar Sampford Brett red sandstone, with earlier parts in ashlar limestone and Bath stone dressings. The roof is tiled, with decorative ridge tiles, coped verges, kneelers, and finials on the gable ends, complemented by ashlar stacks.

The house is arranged around a great hall, facing Southwest and entered through an oriel tower. A projecting gabled wing serves as the Morning Room to the South. The long North East garden front stretches toward the rear, with a service courtyard that may incorporate elements of an earlier dwelling. A large stable courtyard is located at the rear. The architecture is in the Tudor Gothic style.

The two-and-a-half storey Southwest elevation features a four-stage tower with Tudor arch window heads. The tower has a crenellated top with a three-stage oriel bay that corbels out, featuring four-light mullioned and transomed windows. An octagonal stair turret is located to the left of the entrance. The hall itself displays four long, three-light mullioned and transomed windows, with leaded panes, flanked by stepped buttresses linked to a corbelled cornice. To the right is a three-light casement in the gable of the Morning Room, with a two-storey crenellated central bay and five-light mullioned and transomed windows below. An inscription reading "Except the Lord build the house they laboureth in vain that build it" with an Acland coat of arms and motto is carved on the corbelled base of the oriel. The garden front features a complex arrangement of gables and canted bays, with the library bay at the west end being the only part faced in red sandstone.

The stable courtyard possesses a crenellated gateway with finials, constructed of random rubble. It features a large central depressed arch opening flanked by two smaller ones, above a gable displaying the coat of arms. Inside, there’s a screed passage, a wooden three-bay Perpendicular arcade leading to a minstrel’s gallery, and a four-bay arcade interrupted by a hooded fireplace corridor. Other interior features include linenfold panelling, an arch braced collar truss roof with three tiers of quatrefoil wind bracing, and remnants of a fresco on a South East wall. The Drawing Room has Rococo style decoration, while the Dining Room exhibits a ribbed plaster ceiling with a pendant.

St. Audrie's was converted into a girls' school in 1934. The interior, though, is considered somewhat disappointing in comparison to the confident exterior. Stop-chamfered spine beams with run-out stops are present in the roof structure.