Ysgol Efyrnwy

Ysgol Efyrnwy

This is a skilfully planned school building designed to accommodate a sloping site, using expressive planning and architectural detail to clearly articulate its different functional areas.

The building comprises a large hall block linked to a community centre wing to the west, and via a kitchen and canteen wing, to school accommodation to the east. It is arranged as a T-plan block to the south-west (the community centre and main hall), to which L-plan school buildings are linked via a kitchen and dining block. The building is constructed in high-quality buff facing brick with steeply pitched tiled roofs projecting over rafter-ends, generously proportioned and set out across the sloping site.

The hall range is designed to dominate the complex with its high roof. It has paired glazed doors to the left set within an architrave of stepped brick, followed by five full-height windows beyond, divided by pilasters. The roof sweeps down over a porch at the right-hand end, meeting at an angle with the hipped roofed community-centre wing, now the post office but formerly a craft room. This wing features four 9-pane sash windows in its north elevation and five windows to the south. To the east of the hall, an identical block (the former billiard room) creates a striking southern composition. These two flanking blocks are slightly advanced, and between them a band of four 9-pane sash windows, clasped by pilasters, is further advanced with a high parapet breaking through the eaves line, flanked by tripartite sash windows on either side. To the east, the hall roof sweeps down low over a covered walkway providing access from the community-centre wing to the kitchen-canteen wing, which features a band of five horizontal windows.

The school buildings adjoin the dining room at right angles, with the former library positioned at the angle in a slightly advanced and stepped up hipped roofed block to the east. The library has a modern replacement doorway between pilasters in the south elevation, four tall windows to the east, and three high-set small windows lighting a corridor. Round-arched entrances occur at the centre and left of the west elevation; that at the centre is flanked by small paired cloakroom windows, whilst that to the left has modern external doors. Broad 6-pane sash windows are grouped in sets of three and four. The classroom wing extends at right angles with a higher roof, lit by grouped 6-pane sash windows along the corridor running along the north side. Three classrooms to the south are expressed by continuous fenestration between broad canted pilasters, each with a narrow round-arched window. Full-height windows with metal glazing bars to small panes are separated from overlight windows above by a frieze. A lower cloakroom block is advanced to the east, with a round-arched doorway in the west elevation, a tripartite sash window facing south, small high-set windows, 3x6-pane sash windows and a round-arched entrance in the east elevation.

Metal-framed windows are mostly set immediately below the eaves.

The hall forms the lynchpin of the building, with a broad lobby at the lower end between the two rooms of the community centre. The kitchen, dining room and former library connect the hall with the school accommodation, with the classroom block designed to face south and a corridor to the rear providing continuous connection with the other ranges.

Inside, the hall features simplified classical detail reminiscent of art deco. It has a scalloped proscenium arch to the stage and pilasters with rosettes and low-relief panels depicting beasts, the sun, a ship and other motifs. Peacock motifs serve as capitals to pilasters flanking doorways into the lobby of the community centre.