Former Episcopal School Including Boundary Walls, Sea Cadet Hall, High Street

This is a former Episcopal school, originally constructed in 1851. An extension was added in 1897 by J.A. Souttar, with building work undertaken by Messrs Smith & Co. of Stonehaven and joiners R. Mitchell & Sons, also of Stonehaven. The building was restored in the 1950s, and the windows were replaced in 1990.

The school is a tall, single-storey building with an attic, forming an L-plan. The original section has a steeply-pitched roof and a bellcote. A later, two-storey, three-bay range extends to the north, creating a U-shaped layout. The exterior is constructed from squared and snecked rubble, and random rubble, with ashlar quoins. The north side is of stugged ashlar with droved margins; the east side is harled. The building features a raised base course and bracketed band course, with raked cills. Notable architectural details include a hoodmould with label stops and traceried windows incorporating a trefoil head, segmental-arched doorways, and broad segmental-arched windows with chamfered reveals.

The north (principal) elevation is dominated by a central bay with a broad window on the ground floor and a tall traceried window above, rising into the gablehead. There are windows to each floor of the bay to the right, and a bay to the left with a vertically-boarded timber door with decorative ironwork hinges. Above the door is a segmental-arched niche now displaying a coloured plaque dedicated to the Stonehaven & District Sea Cadet Corps, with a narrow window beyond.

The east elevation features three segmental-arched windows to set-back centre bays under a steeply-pitched roof, with a small piended dormer window to the left and two vertically-astragalled rooflights to the right. A cross-finialled stone bellcote sits at the roof ridge to the left, and a base of a stone cross is located at the gablehead adjoining the later range. An advanced gabled bay to the left has a door at ground level, a blocked arrowslit in the gablehead, and a mitred stack straddling the apex. A door leads to a catslide-roofed outshot on the return to the right. A tall, blank gable projects at the outer right, with a door and window to the ground floor of the return to the left, and a further window to the first floor.

The south (rear) elevation has a single-storey addition to the right at ground level, a segmental-arched window to the left, and three small piended dormer windows to the steeply-pitched roof.

The windows are predominantly timber sash and case with a four-pane glazing pattern, though there is replacement small-pane glazing to the north side, and modern windows elsewhere. The roof is covered in grey and purple slates. The building has coped ashlar mitred gablehead stacks with polygonal cans, ashlar-coped skews with mitred, moulded and block skewputts, cast-iron downpipes with decorative rainwater hoppers and fixings.

The interior features moulded plasterwork cornices, boarded timber dadoes, horizontally-panelled timber doors with fluted architraves, plain timber fire surrounds, a cantilevered dog-leg staircase with decorative cast-iron balusters. Evidence of internal alterations is visible where a lowered ceiling abuts the head of the first-floor traceried window, and within the north-south range (now known as Main Deck), where the bases of trusses are exposed.

The site is enclosed by high, semicircular-coped rubble boundary walls.