Description

LEATHERHEAD EPSOM ROAD
TQ/15/NE (north side)
3/134

4.12.80 Dining Hall on north side of courtyard
at St John's School, 2 boarding houses
on east side, with cloisters attached
to these, and main building on south side

GV II

School dining hall with cloisters, two boarding houses, and main school building.
Begun 1872. Red brick with limestone dressings, slate roofs, copper fleches.
Mostly in Flemish Gothic style. The dining hall is rectangular with an apsidal
west end, and single-storey with the appearance of 2½ storeys, symmetrical, with
buttresses, parapet and small octagonal embattled corner turrets ; the central
entrance has a porch formed by 3 bays projected from the cloister (which covers
the ground floor, see below), with gablets above the arches, and an arched inner
doorway; above the cloister each bay is filled by a 3-stage transomed 15-light
window with arched top lights and has a small upstand in the parapet, except
the centre which has a kneelered gablet containing a clockface; the roof has
small triangular dormers in the 2nd and 6th bays, a tall decorated copper-clad
fleche on the centre of the ridge, and coped gables. The west end has a 5-sided
apse with matching windows, the east end has a large Perpendicular window ;
the rear is not of special interest. The interior has panelled walls and a roof of
arch-braced collar trusses which carry radiating struts in semicircular arches.
The cloisters, which enclose the whole of the north and east sides of the
courtyard (forming an emphatic visual bond between the dining hall on one side
and the 2 boarding houses on the other) are arcades of 2-centred arches
arranged in pairs between buttressed piers, the arches of brick and the central
columns of stone with annular caps, with linked hoodmoulds of stone, and a
continuous stone-coped parapet carried round; the cloister rises a step at the
north-east corner and again between the 2 houses, and on this side (as on the
north) it runs into the porches of the houses. These boarding houses are of
matching design, cruciform in plan with lateral entrance halls in the centre, 2½
and 3½ storeys and 2:3:2 bays, symmetrical; the centre of each is 3½-storeyed,
with buttresses rising to 2nd floor, an open arcade of flattened arches at ground
floor, a very narrow 2-storey oriel in the centre with curved glazing in the
windows and semi-conical stone cap, cross windows in the flanking bays, an attic
window of 5 arched lights under a wide 2-centred arch, side-wall chimneys, and
a steeply-pitched roof with a decorated copper niche in the centre; the side
ranges each have 2 similar cross-windows at 1st floor and an attic window of 2
arched lights rising into a gabled dormer. Interiors not inspected. The main
school building (linked to the houses by the cloister, and forming the south side
of the courtyard), has the principal facade to the south: this is U-shaped in
plan, 2½ storeys and 5 bays with projecting 5-bay wings, symmetrical. The
centre, in the form of a 3-stage gate-tower, has a wide 2-centred-arched
moulded doorway at ground door, a stone oriel at 1st floor with curved
transomed windows and semi-conical cap, 2 square-headed lancets and a central
oculus at 2nd floor, a stone band with corner gargoyles and a flat parapet;
otherwise the main range and the wings have transomed windows at ground and
1st floors and gabled half-dormers with arched plate-traceried 2-light windows,
and various tall chimneys. The sides and rear are similar in style. History: school
founded at St Johns Wood, London, in 1851, and transferred to Leatherhead in
1872; main building gutted by fire 1913, rebuilt 1914.

Listing NGR: TQ1702256683

External Links

• Historic England Listing
• Wikidata Q26485443

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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