Main building at Chard School, Chard, Somerset

Summary

House of 1583, then a grammar school from 1671; independent since 1971. Later additions and alterations; various programmes of repair and renovation.

Description

House of 1583, then a grammar school from 1671; independent since 1971. Later additions and alterations; various programmes of repair and renovation.

MATERIALS: constructed of squared, knapped chert, stone rubble, partly-rendered to the rear, and some red brick with Hamstone dressings. The roofs of Delabole slate and asbestos tiles have brick stacks to the ridge and gable ends, and stone coping to the gable ends. The C19 and C20 extensions to the rear have painted and rendered walls, probably brick, with roofs of Welsh slate and asbestos tiles. The link building (with Monmouth house) is also built of painted and rendered brick and has flat and monopitched roofs.

PLAN: the late-C16 house is approximately L-shaped on plan, comprising a five-bay main range with a projecting entrance porch to the right of centre and a two-bay rear service wing. Later extensions have been added to the rear wing; the northernmost addition is skewed north-eastwards. There is also a single-storey block and a small C20 lean-to at the north-west corner between the main range and the rear wing. The house is connected to the adjacent Monmouth House (Grade II*) by a narrow, single-bay link, probably mid- / late C19, over the passageway that provides access to the rear.

EXTERIOR: the building has two storeys and attics. The principal elevation faces Fore Street and is a five-window range with an off-centre, full-height porch. It has a chamfered plinth that is stepped towards the right-hand end and sill bands to the ground-floor and first-floor windows; the lower one also steps to the right. The restored windows have cavetto- (hollow) moulded stone mullions, labelled hoodmoulds and C20 leaded lights. The three-storey porch breaks forwards and is gabled to the front and sides. Its entrance has a stone door surround with four-centred arched head, roll mouldings and spandrels, all much weathered, a modern metal barred gate and a square-headed hoodmould. The lobby is lit by two small lancets and has an inner doorway that has a similar surround, though not weathered, and a plank door with applied fillets. The first floor has a four-light window to the front and windows of two lights to the sides, a sill band and a continuous hoodmould and the second floor has windows of three lights and a sill band. At attic level there are short lengths of decorative lead guttering and two rainwater hoppers; one bearing the initials of William Symes and the other with the date ‘1583’. The ground- and first-floor windows of the principal elevation are of four lights to the outer bays, six lights flanking the porch and the two gabled dormers have three lights. To the left, over the passageway that provides access to the rear is a two-storey link to Monmouth House. It has a horned six-over-six timber sash window on each floor.

Most of the windows in the rear elevation of the main range are timber casements. There are French doors in the eastern bay and a doorway close to the junction with the rear wing. At the western end of the main range, which is obscured at ground level by a square addition of stone and brick, is a projecting, narrow gabled bay. The east elevation of the rear wing has a cavetto-moulded mullioned window on the ground and first floors, both with C20 leaded lights and hoodmoulds, and a two-light dormer window and a small rooflight. The C19 and mid-C20 rear extensions have metal-framed windows and some timber sashes. The gabled, north elevation is symmetrical, with a central entrance flanked by a window to either side, three first-floor windows and a small two-light attic window. A metal fire escape has been added to the west elevation.

INTERIOR: the room at the eastern end of the building has a mid-C19 Gothic-style decorative scheme, with a marble fireplace, enriched cornice and ceiling rose and carved architrave and shutters to the front window. The adjacent room is the former parlour and has steep-chamfered and moulded transverse beams. Beyond the parlour is a lateral passage with reset late-C16 panelling and a straight-flight lateral staircase. Some box framing is visible in the staircase’s outside wall. The passage leads through to the western third of the building and the rear wing, and a stone four-centred arched doorway with plain sunk spandrels previously opened onto the principal room, now sub-divided, which retains a C17 cornice and a stone fireplace. The rear wing has a timber winder stairs, and in the adjacent room is a fireplace with a late-C16 four-centred arched stone surround with hollow-moulded jambs and sunk spandrels into which a mid-C19 cast-iron range has been inserted. There is also an entrance into the rear wing from the passageway between this building and Monmouth House. It has a timber, Tudor-arched surround and a plank door with small leaded window leads out to the passageway between this building and Monmouth House.

The newel stairs leads to a first-floor landing. There are a pair of Tudor-arched doorways, one with a late-C16 plank door, within the timber-framed partition to the front (west) room, and in the plank and muntin screen to the left is a repaired, late-C16 pointed-arched, plank door that opens onto in the eastern half of the range, the rear lateral stairs and a doorway to the later rear extensions. The stone fireplaces in the first-floor rooms are similar to those on the ground floor, though not all have sunk spandrels. A narrow round-headed opening and steps lead up to the link building which provides access to Monmouth House; it contains a C19 staircase and a small room on each floor. There are few other historic fittings in this building or in the extensions attached to the rear wing. The attic rooms of the main range are accessed from a straight-flight staircase. The roof timbers comprise principal trusses with cambered collars and threaded purlins and are reinforced with iron ties. Some of the tie beams have been cut.

History

Chard originated as a Saxon settlement that was located probably in the vicinity of the Church of St Mary, in an area now known as the Old Town, and was part of a large estate belonging to the Bishop of Bath and Wells by the time of the Norman Conquest. In 1236 Bishop Jocelyn granted a charter for a borough to be established to the north of the earlier settlement, laid out along the High Street-Fore Street axis. The local economy was dominated by woollen cloth production during the medieval and post-medieval periods, and Chard was a centre for cloth finishing, and for trading and exporting the finished material up until the C19.

Many buildings in the town were destroyed or significantly damaged by a major fire in 1577. Recovery appears to have been rapid, and by the early C17 many new buildings had been constructed, among them a large, three-storey house, now part of Chard School, at the eastern end of Fore Street. It was built a the private residence of William Symes in around 1583, as evinced by the date inscribed on one of its rainwater hoppers, although it is possible thee rainwater goods may have been repositioned. He was a successful merchant, but was, however, described by one of his contemporaries as ‘a pedlar, and a base fellow’. Symes had large land holdings in the South West and his main residence was Poundisford Lodge in Pitminster to the south of Taunton. He died in 1597 and the house in Chard was left to his widow Elizabeth. In 1671 the property, along with an acre of land, was conveyed by one of his descendants, also called William, to a number of trustees so that a grammar school and schoolmaster’s residence could be established there for the ‘education and bringing up of youth in virtue and good learning.’ It was conveyed in 1787 to the Corporation of Chard on a 1000 year lease.

There appears to be some discrepancy about the date of the house. The Victoria County History of Somerset (see Sources) refers to a document that describes a fire in an adjacent house in 1727 which ‘utterly destroyed’ the grammar school, and that a licence was then issued to beg for money to rebuild it. It is possible that the fire may have perhaps destroyed a different building or only damaged the former house since it retains the characteristic form and features of a late-C16 building. In 1807 responsibility for running the grammar school was passed by the Borough to the school’s trustees. A report by the Charity Commissioners in 1823 records that the school comprised ‘a parlour, hall for the boys, kitchen and apartments that may accommodate 20 boarders’ and that they, along with 10 day pupils were taught in the schoolroom (separately listed at Grade II, Chapel to the East of Chard School). The report also stated that the school was practically being run as a private venture.

Over the centuries the building has been subject to alterations and extensions to accommodate the changing requirements of an educational establishment, as well as various programmes of repair and restoration. Due to an increase in pupil numbers during the second half of the C19 new buildings and extensions were added, including a dining room, a second schoolroom, a chapel, a laboratory and a gymnasium. There was further expansion in the late 1920s and early 1930s when the adjacent Monmouth House (Grade II*) was purchased and the former house was extended to the rear with a new wing, later called Wyndham House. The purpose-built chapel was demolished in 1957 and the original schoolroom was subsequently converted for church services. Two years later the Wyndham House wing was severely damaged by fire and a new, detached Wyndham House (which has formed part of a separate school since 1971) was built elsewhere in the school grounds. The fire-damaged wing was substantially rebuilt, although with a much reduced footprint, possibly designed by the architect Emmanuel Vincent-Harris who was responsible for the new Wyndham House and several other school buildings. The school closed briefly in 1971, some of its buildings and land were sold, but it reopened as a mixed independent school that same year.

Reasons for Listing

Chard School, a late-C16 merchant’s house which became a grammar school in 1671, is listed at Grade II* for the following principal reasons:

Architectural interest:

* as a well-preserved house which retains a significant proportion of early fabric;
* for the legibility of the building’s evolution and, for this date, its advanced plan form, notable for passage access to the principal rooms;
* for the high-quality of craftsmanship exhibited in the building’s carpentry and decorative details.

Historic interest:

* an important and prominent building which not only illustrates the major rebuilding that took place in the town following a major fire in 1577, but also its prosperity at this time;
* as a grammar school established 1671, it represents an early example of private philanthropy.

External Links

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