Ysgol Syr Thomas Jones

Ysgol Syr Thomas Jones

Large-scale purpose-built comprehensive school, an ambitious and progressive essay in design for secondary education from the immediate post-war period. The school is ingeniously planned to follow the line of the hillside and take account of the sloping ground.

The building forms a long asymmetrical range of three main parts, loosely centred on the main entrance and assembly hall block. Staggered, long three-storey classroom blocks stand to the left of the entrance block, with a modern theatre block branching from the north-east corner. To the right is a two-storey curving wing housing the dining hall and gymnasiums, from which the boys' gymnasium is advanced at a lower level to the far right. The music rooms form a rear range at the back of the hall, linked to the main classroom blocks by a modern single-storey curving range built into the slope to the rear of the school.

The structure employs frame construction in concrete or steel, expressed externally as a series of highly regular grids with white rendered bands articulating a grid of regular glazing with metal-framed windows throughout. This modernist white grid is visually relieved by the use of stone cladding in the lower storeys, end walls, and tower defining the entrance block. The main entrance is raised by a series of stone steps leading into broad continuous glazing framed within a coloured rendered wall. Single-storey, stone-clad administration blocks are advanced to either side of this, and the tower is offset to the right. The tower has a slightly battered profile and shallow pitched gabled roof, reminiscent perhaps of the engine houses of the nearby Parys Mountain. A smooth stone clock face occupies the facing gable apex, and porthole windows appear in the right-hand return.

The three-storey classroom blocks are planned on the staircase principle, favoured in the immediate post-war period, with interconnecting classrooms between end and central stairwells. This plan receives clear external expression, as the staircases punctuate the regular lines of classroom fenestration as wider and continuous vertical glazed panels. Classroom fenestration forms continuous horizontal bands, with a continuous canopy over the first-floor windows echoing the overhanging eaves line and a simple railed balcony above the stepped-out stone-clad ground floor.

The curving wing to the north of the entrance has a somewhat different architectural character, in which regularly spaced windows punctuate the smooth rendered white walls. Full-height windows to the ground floor light the canteen and gyms, with smaller windows in the storeyed part above. Rear elevations follow the same principles, though with slightly simpler architectural expression.

Modern added classroom and theatre blocks have rendered elevations with regularly spaced casement windows; the theatre block has a flat roof and added classrooms to the rear with a mix of flat and gable roofs.

Interior planning is simple and coherent. The entrance hall separates the classroom blocks from the communal areas (hall, dining hall, library, gymnasiums). The entrance hall is stepped down towards the rear and separated from the hall by a glazed screen. Corridors lead off to each side and flank the hall to the rear. To the left are the main classroom blocks: three storeys with the ground floor containing cloakrooms and toilets leading off the main corridor, and first and second floors with interconnected classrooms accessed via end and central staircases, enabling each classroom to have independent access. The rear corridor leads to the music rooms beyond the assembly hall (planned away from the quieter classroom blocks) and the modern craft and workshop rooms. To the right of the entrance, steps lead down to the canteen and gyms and up to offices and the library, accessed along a corridor illuminated by porthole windows in the ceiling.