Royal Hospital School, Main Range Holbrook, England

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TM 13 NE HOLBROOK STUTTON ROAD

2/35 Royal Hospital School, main range including 16/1/81 Assembly Hall, Dining Room, Gymnasium, Administration and Teaching Accommodation

• II*

Main range of school including assembly hall, dining hall, gymnasium, administrative and teaching accommodation. C1925-33. Buckland and Heywood. Red brick, stone dressings, rusticated block pilaster strips to quoins. Interlocking roof tiles of Mediterranean type to hipped roofs. Eaves cornices. Large scale, axial composition with main view from the Stour estuary, south. Neo-Georgian style with features in Neo-Wren manner. Mainly 2 storeys, the wings with tall windows to south. 7:20:3:20:7 window range of mainly small paned vertically sliding sashes, each wing with 3 angled parapeted bays, hipped roofs, architraved central windows, pediments on console brackets, doorways with double doors below these windows. Inner returns of wings with tetrastyle entrance portico to dining hall and gymnasium, each with podia, figured pediments and cupola. Venetian windows to first floor balconies above open arcades. High central clock tower of 6 stages, after St Vedast, Foster Lane, City of London, with paired pilasters flanking alcoves with arcaded treatment in diminishing stages. Giant tetrastyle portico at base, forming main south entrance, in modified Corinthian style. To north the wings form E-shaped plan with arcaded courts and tetrastyle porticoed, wings of the courts with open upper loggias. Giant central portico forming main north entrance. The Royal Hospital School for the Sons of Seafarers was founded at Greenwich c1712. It moved to this site in 1933 due to the generosity of Gifford Sherman Reade (1846-1929) one time of Holbrook House who emigrated to New Zealand and who willed money and land in Holbrook and surrounds to the Royal Navy for services rendered during the 1914-18 war. In a garden village setting the buildings of the school remain in excellent condition and unaltered externally excepting new blocks in the front courtyards of the main range. Staff accommodation houses line Stutton Road and form a semi-circle in front of the north entrance to the main block qv, 2/42-51. To the south are 10 large accommodation houses for pupils, unlisted, and to south west Nelson House qv 2/40. The large chapel is to west of the main range, qv 2/38 and the terrace and parade ground to south, qv 2/36. Holbrook House and The Infirmary, unlisted, are to north west. The quality of materials and workmanship to all buildings are of a very high standard and great attention has been paid to detail. The grounds are landscaped and well maintained. The spire of the main range is a landmark visible for many miles.

Listing NGR: TM1654335227