Summary

A school gymnasium built c.1919 for use by the school then occupying the adjacent Council House, in use as offices after 1925 and as a council chamber after 1974.

Description

A school gymnasium built c.1919 for use by the school then occupying the adjacent Council House, in use as offices after 1925 and as a council chamber after 1974.

MATERIALS
The building is built of a timber frame with a brick plinth and plaster panels, under a tile roof.

PLAN
The building is rectangular on plan, and is orientated roughly NW - SE.

DESCRIPTION
The building is single storey and faces SW. It is understood to be constructed of a softwood timber frame and has roughcast rendered elevations with timber framed panels of varying sizes. It has timber casement windows with moulded hoods and a centrally-projecting porch, with a hipped tile roof and a louvered ventilation lantern with lead domed roof. The rear elevation facing Avenue Road has a row of high casement windows.

Internally, the building retains skirting and dado rails, and the original roof of arch-braced trusses with timber boarding is understood to survive above a modern suspended ceiling.

Standing as it does near to the site of the original entrance lodge to the Priory, the former gymnasium has a close physical relationship with the house in addition to the functional relationship it has retained throughout its history.

Pursuant to s.1 (5) of the Planning (Listed Buildings and Conservation Areas) Act 1990 ('the Act'), it is declared that the single storey extension attached to the northern end of the building is not of special architectural and historic interest and is therefore excluded from the listing.

This list entry was subject to a Minor Amendment on 23/10/2019

History

Priory Lodge is thought to have been built c.1919, and was originally built as a gymnasium, when the adjacent house then known as The Priory was in use as a preparatory school.

Following the death of the builder of The Priory, Albert Miles Speer, the house was offered for sale and eventually leased in 1909 by his son to the Lloyd Jones family for use as a school. The school changed hands in 1912 and 1913 and the freehold of the site was purchased in 1919 by the lessees Claude Harold Giles and his partner Arthur Allen. There is some conflicting evidence as to the precise date of construction for the gymnasium. It appears in some historic photographs dated as 1911, and yet a conveyance plan from 1919 shows the site as a rose garden. It would seem likely that it could have been built following the purchase of the freehold, and as such is dated here as c.1919.

The preparatory school moved in 1925 to Wood Norton Hall near Evesham, and The Priory was sold to Malvern Urban District Council. The former gymnasium was then used as offices and briefly for the distribution of gas masks. Following the creation of Malvern Hills District Council in 1974, the building has been used as the council chamber. With these subsequent uses, the former gymnasium has retained a functional link and physical relationship with the Priory.

Reasons for Listing

REASONS FOR DESIGNATION
Priory Lodge, an educational gymnasium dating from c.1919 when it was built for the school then occupying the Council House, used as council offices since 1925 and council chamber since 1974, is listed at Grade II for the following principal reasons:
* Building type: as a good example of an early C20 gymnasium built for educational purposes, of a pleasing design with good detailing;
* Historic interest: it has strong historical association with the adjacent Council House; the survival of the building and the adjacent building which it was built to serve gives it added interest and good group value;
* Degree of survival: the building survives relatively unaltered.

External Links

• Historic England Listing
• Wikidata Q66478424

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.

Recommended Books

• 
  Listed Buildings, Conservation Areas and Monuments
• 
  [(Shropshire)] [By (author) Nikolaus Pevsner] published on (January, 1958)
• 
  Hertfordshire (Pevsner Architectural Guides: Buildings of England)
• 
  Nottinghamshire (Pevsner Architectural Guides: Buildings of England)
• 
  Somerset: North and Bristol: The Buildings of England (Pevsner Architectural Guides) (Pevsner Architectural Guides: Buildings of England)
• 
  Period Property Manual (New Ed)