Ysgol Gyfun Bryn Celynnog

Ysgol Gyfun Bryn Celynnog

A single-storey Neo-Georgian school building with an E-shaped plan, constructed of red brick with prominent limestone dressings and slate roofs. Red brick stacks rise to the left and right of the front range roof pitch. The design features a dentilled stone eaves cornice and dentilled pediments. Tall windows rise to the eaves with stone sills and contain 6-over-6-pane horned sashes with 6-pane ventilating lights above.

The front range is symmetrical, facing east, with a central main entrance and advanced gabled bays at the ends. The entrance is set within a dressed stone doorcase with two Ionic columns in front of piers supporting an entablature inscribed 'Beddau Girls School', above which sits a segmental stone pediment. The door is boarded with an overlight retaining original glazing. Four pairs of windows flank the entrance.

The advanced bays form the gable ends of the north and south wings. Each has a triangular pediment with a string course continuing the eaves cornice. Each pediment is broken by an almost full-height round arch, slightly recessed with gauged brick heads and tall moulded keystones containing a window below a stone tympanum. The left tympanum reads 'Glamorgan County Council, 1928' and bears the county shield with a ribbon beneath. The right tympanum reads 'Beddau Girls Council School' with the same inscription in Welsh below.

The external north side has a doorcase offset to the left with brick piers, moulded stone cornice with brickwork above, the centre bearing a stone tablet reading 'Merched' (Girls), with smaller lettering naming 'D Pugh-Jones, County Architect' and 'Richard Jones, Builder, Caerphilly'. Above is a small triangular pediment with brick infill. The entrance contains double panelled doors with a multi-pane overlight. To the far left is a window next to a smaller 4-over-4-pane sash. In front of these is an iron railing enclosure containing a flight of steps leading down to a basement room. To the right of the doorway are ten windows as on the front, except the sixth window which is very small and set under a gauged brick head.

The external south side mirrors the north side, with a similar doorcase offset to the right, inscribed 'Merched', and the same window arrangement. Fifteen windows are positioned to the left as on the front. The rear gable ends of the ranges have moulded verges but no openings.

Around the rear sides of the front range and north and south wings runs a low enclosed corridor now with a flat roof and mainly late twentieth-century glazing. Sash windows project above the corridor, lighting the classrooms. The end of the south corridor has double doors. A flat-roofed extension joins the end of the north wing and leads to a late twentieth-century school block. The shorter central rear wing is four windows wide, each sash and ventilating light of eight panes, with moulded eaves. Against its gable end is a later brick extension with a flat roof. Small flat-roofed blocks sit in the angles of the front and end wings.

Inside the main entrance are half-glazed double doors and a short passage leading to a corridor running along the rear of the front range and continuing at right angles behind the north and south wings. Classrooms open off this corridor. Straight ahead from the main entrance is the assembly hall, now the school canteen with an added kitchen block behind. In the southeast corner between the front and south ranges is the former head teacher's office, and in the northeast corner a former boiler room; both originally had fireplaces. Half-glazed double doors within the side entrances have small flanking rooms, possibly cloakrooms. Near the centre of the north wing is a small tutor's office, marked externally by a small window and entered through a boarded door with a small window to its left. Internal detail includes a brown glazed tile dado with green banding. The classrooms remain mainly unaltered, with half-lit panelled doors with multi-pane lights adjacent to sash windows. The hall, entered through half-lit double doors, is four-bay with arched braces decorated with moulded triangles supported on small corbels. Two doors to the rear lead to the kitchen.