Description

666/0/10059 STOURBRIDGE ROAD
21-NOV-08 Parkside School

II
Secondary school, designed in 1909 by A.V.Rowe with G.H.Gadd as executant architect and opened in April 1912. Later, C20 additions and alterations. The building is of red brick with ashlar dressings and a plain tiled roof. It has two storeys with attic and basement and its principal facade is designed in an Edwardian Baroque style.
EXTERIOR: The principal entrance front faces onto Stourbridge Road, has twenty-one bays and is symmetrically arranged. All windows are sashes and almost all have key stones, with cambered heads to the ground floor windows and straight heads to the first floor. There are gabled projections, each of three bays, between the fifth to the seventh bays and the fifteenth to the seventeenth bays. These projections have quoins to the corners and in each case the ground and first floor windows of the central bay is treated as a unified composition with a large-scale, aedicular surround. In each case the first floor window has an arched top which projects into the gable and there is an oculus to the gable apex set in a richly moulded cartouche. The central bay has a frontispiece with channelled rustication and triple keystones to the arched door and window openings. Behind this central feature, on the ridge is a timber and lead bellcote with louvred openings to the sides and miniature pediments. A prominent, bracketed cornice runs along the front and continues over the large arched windows at the centre (where it forms an arched pediment) and at either side, beneath the gables. At either side of this lengthy facade are further, two-bay blocks with hipped roofs, added in the first half of the C20 which are on line with the façade. Link corridors, which connect them to the side doors of the main block, have had changing rooms added to their road flanks in the later-C20. Beyond these again, and also on line, are two free-standing bike sheds built of red brick in garden wall bond with pantile roofs and four bays to their inner faces divided by Tuscan pillars. These also appear to have been added in the first half of the C20.
The rear of the building has to the centre at first floor level four prominent arched windows which light the library. To either side of these are shallow wings. These have gabled heads and four bays to the ground and first floors with cambered heads to the windows. To the gables are stone dressings and occuli which have lattice glazing. Beyond these are paired staircase windows, falling to mezzanine level, below which are keyed occuli.
Attached at the centre of the rear by a corridor link with arched windows is the school hall which appears from the evidence of maps to have been rebuilt or enlarged in the first half of the C20. This has six windows to each flank. The later-C20 gymnasium is attached at the west of this.
INTERIOR: The principal range, which fronts onto Stourbridge Road has a central spinal corridor on both floors. Dogleg staircases connect the two floors and basement at north and south of centre on the west side. The corridors, staircases and all of the classrooms retain glazed bricks to the area below the dado rail. In the corridors and staircases these are brown in colour with bottle green to the classrooms and a lighter, sage, green to mark the later classrooms. Although suspended ceilings have been inserted in several of the first floor rooms, the original ceilings can be seen to survive above these. Many of the floors throughout the building have been covered with carpet tiles and plastic tiles but in two rooms the original wood block floors are exposed and it is likely that these survive elsewhere. Half-glazed doors survive, although in almost every case the upper glazing bars have been removed, and door furniture also survives. In three classrooms the original corner cupboard is still in situ. The boys' changing room retains its wooden benches and metal shoe lockers and grills and coat hooks with their cast metal numbers. The school hall also retains its herringbone woodblock floor and has a segmental, barrel-vaulted ceiling. The walls are divided into bays by projecting pilasters which rise from panelled plinths at dado level and support an entablature beneath the coved ceiling. There is oak panelling to the lower body of the walls.
The gymnasium building to the west of the hall and the kitchens which are joined to the hall's northern side are of lesser interest.

HISTORY: The building lies close to the centre of Bromsgrove, near to the church of St. John the Baptist. The land on which the school stands is recorded on early Ordnance Survey maps as being called `Churchfields' and its specific site was formerly used as a cricket ground. Bromsgrove secondary School was established in 1905 and shared premises with the School of Science and Art and the Bromsgrove Institute. There were initially fifty-four pupils, but by 1912 this had grown to one hundred and a new, purpose-built school was needed. The design for the present building was made in 1909 by A.Vernon Rowe, County Advisory Architect and was carried out under the supervision of G.H.Gadd, a local Bromsgrove architect. The building was opened by Lady Coventry on 18th April 1912 and continued to operate as a school until its closure in 2008. The principal range, facing onto Stourbridge Road, was extended, apparently in the first part of the C20, by the addition of pavilion wings to either side which were later joined to the main block by single-storey corridors, and by bicycle sheds. The hall range to the rear also appears to have been re-built or extended at the same time.

SOURCE: A.Brooks & N.Pevsner, The Buildings of England, Worcestershire, 2007, p.200.

REASONS FOR DESIGNATION: Parkside School, Stourbridge Road, Bromsgrove is designated at Grade II for the following principal reasons:

* The design of the buildings is handled in an assured and accomplished manner and has distinct architectural quality.
* The use of ornament, particularly carved stone, is unusually lavish for a Secondary school and it is well executed.
* The original plan has suffered little alteration and many of the rooms retain the great majority of their original fixtures. Overall the level of intactness is remarkable.
* Later additions have quality and are sympathetic to the original design. The hall forms an impressive space with carefully-considered architectural detailing.

External Links

• Historic England Listing
• Wikidata Q26672194

External links are from the relevant listing authority and, where applicable, Wikidata. Wikidata IDs may be related buildings as well as this specific building. If you want to add or update a link, you will need to do so by editing the Wikidata entry.

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