Description

1883 (see NOTES). 2-storey school on steeply sloping site with open arcaded ground floor, stone-mullioned windows in gabled bays above, long stone stair to recessed 1st-floor porch to left, and detached single-storey range to NE. Bull-faced yellow sandstone ashlar with polished ashlar dressings. 1st-floor band course to principal block; continuous hoodmoulds to tripartite gable windows; blind oculi in apexes of gables. Long and short quoins. Chamfered window margins.

MAIN BLOCK, SE (PRINCIPAL) ELEVATION: 8-bay arcaded play shelter at ground (the two leftmost bays blocked); 4 gabled bays above; tripartite mullioned windows with semicircular central fanlights above and blind oculi in apexes. Stone forestair to shouldered, gabled, stop-chamfered stone entrance flanked by single rectangular openings.

MAIN BLOCK, SW (SECONDARY) ELEVATION: Roughly 8 bays, with tripartite mullioned windows and stone dormers breaking eaves of central 2 piend-roofed bays.

SE RANGE: Roughly 8-bay, stepped, gabled block with side entrance to projecting gabled porch.

Non-traditional, early-21st-century glazing following original glazing pattern. Welsh slate roof. Coped, kneelered skews. Coped, octagonal gablehead stacks with octagonal buff clay cans. Cast-iron rainwater goods.

INTERIOR: Large central hall with corbelled ceiling and rooflights. Stone chimneypieces in some classrooms; metal heating ducts in others, with painted brass control levers in the form of hands. Some tongue-and-groove panelling to dado height.

BOUNDARY WALLS AND GATEPIERS: 2 square pyramid-capped sandstone gatepiers; low, bull-faced, ashlar-coped sandstone wall with plain railings;

Statement of Interest

A well-proportioned, late-19th-century school with a plan cleverly adapted to its sloping site, incorporating an arcaded play shelter into its lower level and thus increasing the floor area of the principal storey above.

The original Wilton Parish School was built in 1847, but it appears to have been completely replaced by the present building in 1883 after the School Board had taken over running the school in 1872. The architect is not known, but it is an unusual and accomplished design and has a very strong presence on the streetscape. Despite being somewhat altered internally, it retains an unusual amount of original features, including the panelling, chimneypieces and heating ducts with their idiosyncratic hand-shaped control handles.

External Links

• Historic Environment Scotland Listing
• Wikidata Q77781053

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

• 
  Churches: An Architectural Guide (Pevsner Architectural Guides: Introductions)
• 
  Yorkshire: York and the East Riding (Pevsner Architectural Guides: Buildings of England)
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  Bedfordshire, Huntingdonshire, and Peterborough (Pevsner Architectural Guides) (Pevsner Architectural Guides: Buildings of England)
• 
  Essex: Buildings of England Series (Buildings of England) (Pevsner Architectural Guides: Buildings of England)
• 
  Period property manual, victorian house manual 2 books collection set by ian rock
• 
  Department for Communities Listed Historic Buildings of Northern Ireland: Information Guide for the 2nd Survey of Historic Buildings