Countess Gytha County Primary School (Original Building Only) With South Boundary Wall And Railings

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QUEEN CAMEL CP

HIGH STREET (West side)

Countess Gytha County Primary School (original building only) with south boundary wall and railings

(Formerly listed as Countess Gwytha County Primary School (original building only) with south boundary wall and railings.)

GV

II

School. Opened 1873, the gift of Capt Harvey St John Mildmay, lord of the manor. Local lias stone cut and squared with Ham stone dressings; plain clay tile roof between coped gables; brick chimney stacks on stone bases having offsets. In a typical Victorian early Gothic style, well detailed. Single storey, five bays symmetrical south facade, of which bay three has full height gable crowned with bell-turret, and bays two and four have projecting porches: bays one and five have three-light shoulder-arched chamfer mullioned windows without labels, plain glazed; bays two and four gabled porches having plain chamfered pointed arched doorways with boarded doors, set in gables simple stone plaques inscribed: BOYS SCHOOL and GIRLS SCHOOL respectively; low trefoil cusped circular lights to sides of each doorway: bay three has a taller three-light plate tracery style window with three circle head, in plain chamfered pointed arched recess without label, diamond leaded, with external ferramenta; above a quatrefoil light, and to sides two carved panels with shields, one presumably the Mildmay Arms, the other the St Andrew's cross for the Diocese of Wells; gable surmounted by standard type bell turret - fluted caps to square columns carrying gablet with wrot iron cross finial. To east and west gables pairs two-light lancets with circle over in pointed arched recesses with quatrefoil windows set over, having carvings in cusping.

Sundry additions to rear, north and elsewhere on site, not of special interest. Along south boundary, about three metres from school building, the south boundary wall; lias and Ham stone wall, plinthed and with shaped coping, about 0.75 metre high, with ashlar piers at ends and to gateways opposite each doorway: capping the walls are two simple horizontal square rod-rails set with braced uprights at about one metre intervals which have twist points and wing barbs. The whole very much a "textbook" design of its date, in very prominent part of the village opposite the church.