Description

TL 4114 HUNSDON HIGH STREET (west side) Hunsdon village

7/23 No 43, Village Hall and No 47 (Formerly 24.1.67 listed as Village Hall) opposite Acorn Street

GV II

School, now village hall and 2 houses adjoining. Early C18, incorporating possibly older part at rear, altered to present appearance in early C19. Timberframed plastered symmetrical cross-shaped building with steep red tiled roofs, facing S. 2 2- storeys hipped roof domestic wings flank a higher single storey former schoolroom with jettied half-timbered gable end to street. It became the Village Hall c1924 and was extended to the rear in red brick incorporating the old brick walls of a lower building. Modern low rear extension not of special interest. The lefthand wing, No 43, is now a separate house: No 47 on the right is the caretaker's house. These wings each have a 3-light wooden casement window on each floor, a side entrance with C19 flush panelled door, and a large red brick rectangular central chimney through the ridge at the junction with the hall, topped by 2 tall grey brick C19 octagonal shafts with ornamental caps and bases. Each has 1 main room on each floor with stair and lobby on the side wall, but a shallow 2 storeys C19 rear extension under a continuation of the main roof gives more space. At No 43, this is timberframed and weatherboarded but at No 47 (the former teacher's house) in grey brick. The lofty schoolroom is probably little-changed from the single room 'of fair size' noted by the Schools Inspector in 1855 (HLHS (1979) 55). It has a 6-bay arc-hbraced collar roof carried on simple corbels. The lower part of the front wall with its central doorway are probably early C18. The wide doorway has a shortened panelled canopy carried on enriched console brackets and a moulded dentilled cornice with enriched mouldings. Early C19 reeded pilasters have been added and a small rectangular window each side with a small-paned cast iron casement. there is an C18 ovolo moulded door with raised and fielded panels, between schoolroom and teacher's house. The present jettied gable wall with a striking pattern of exposed timbers, a large mullioned and transomed leaded central window, cusped bargeboard and roll moulded bressumer was probably an alteration of c1837 (date on the chimney of No 41) when a larger composition with jettied pavilions to right and left was formed, linked by high plastered screen walls to the cruciform central block. The jetty has long been supported on 4 wooden posts. By 1846, the school had joined the Church of England National Society and remained a National (Church) School up to 1924 (HLHS (1979) 55). An historic C18 estate school altered as the centrepiece of a symmetrical Gothic group in the early C19 and still in public use. The centrepiece of the village Conservation Area.

Listing NGR: TL4174614124

External Links

• Wikidata Q26395928

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