NHER 53136 (Building record) - Church Cottage

September 2009. Listed Grade II.
School and attached schoolmaster's house, built 1841; extended late 19th century and converted into a single dwelling in 1983. Carrstone, with contrasting cream brick dressings and slate roofs.
The original plan was T shaped, and consisted of a single storey school hall with a two storey schoolmaster's house forming a cross-wing at the west end; there is a single storey lean-to structure attached to the west elevation and north-west corner. The later addition of the hall at the east end forms a second cross-wing balancing the schoolmaster's house.
The school is built in an early Gothic Revival style, with Tudor arches to the doors, and with brick hood moulds to both windows and doors. The main entrance (to the earlier hall) is through a canted porch, and in the gable end of the later hall is a wide Tudor arched door below a mullioned overlight. This hall also has a secondary door set into the corner where it joins the earlier building. The quoins and door and window surrounds are of cream brick, creating a flushwork pattern with rectangles of stone enclosed by brick around the main entrance. The windows to the halls (two each to south, north and east elevations) are casements with wooden mullions; those to the schoolmaster's house are modern replacements. There is a chimney above the centre of the house, and a small bellcote on the east end of the roof ridge of the earlier hall.
The schoolmaster's house consists of two rooms each to ground and first floor, separated by a steep central stair which rises between them. Windows in the west wall of the ground floor rooms let in light borrowed from the lean-to kitchen and utility area. The rooms retain chimney breasts, but no original fireplaces survive.
The entrance to the earlier school hall is through the canted porch, and leads into a lobby with doors to either side of a central partition. To the west is a living room with false thermal ceiling and wooden gallery. To the east a similar space has been subdivided into small rooms. The later hall has been divided into two spaces, the smaller of which, to the north, has a lowered ceiling; the front section retains its original plank ceiling. A plaque over the door between the earlier and later school halls reads 'National School Erected AD 1841'.
There is a stone wall to the north which encloses a back yard. Attached to the wall at the central point is a small square structure, originally a privy, but which now houses the boiler. Iron railings running between five beehive shaped stone pillars form the south garden boundary, although two of the pillars are modern replicas of the originals.
Information from (S1).
A. Cattermole (NLA), 13 November 2009.

February 2012. Building Survey.
A small national School, now part of the house next door.
See (S2) for further details.
Z. Dack (HES), 10 May 2012.