PRN 65609 A former school and school house built in 1867 by the architect Charles Kirk at his own expense, with extensions of 1898. The original buildings are in coursed, squared stone with ashlar dressings, having slate roofs and coped gables and kneelers. There are decorative ridge tiles and various stone chimney stacks. The buildings, in the Gothic Revival style, have stone mullion windows with cusped heads. The single storey chapel lies on the Grantham Road side, with the school house to the rear. Internally the chapel has an arched brace roof rising from wall posts and brick corbels; it also contains a carved piscina. The roof in the main schoolroom is reputed to be similar to the one in the chapel but it is obscured by a suspended ceiling. The buildings form a well-designed and finely-detailed school and school house complex, notable for the unusual addition of a dedicated chapel. For the full description and the legal address of this listed building please refer to the appropriate List of Buildings of Special Architectural or Historic Interest. {1} A programme of building recording was carried out at the school in January 2009, following the vacation of the buildings in 2002 and the transfer of the school to a new site in Sleaford. The buildings had been vandalised during the intervening period and some areas were in a poor state of repair. The survey found no evidence to identify the late Victorian additions mentioned in the listing description, distinguishing only between the original structures of 1867-8 and two extensions made in the 1960s and 1980s. The original 19th century core comprised a chapel, school room, school house and an enclosed yard. The chapel, located on the northern side of the complex, has the form and dimensions of a medieval church, with a high, beamed roof in the nave, giving way to the east, to the narrower and low roofed chancel. The font had been removed to the new school in 2002, but its location at western end of the nave was marked by a pedestal situated below a centrally positioned window. The northern façade of the chapel contains eight sets of two-light mullioned windows - six in the nave and two in the chancel – with buttress between. The central part of the nave elevation has a gable containing two sets of windows, and which is supported by three of the buttresses. Above and between the gable windows is a plaque with the inscription COME YE CHILDREN. HEARKEN TO ME: I WILL TEACH YOU THE FEAR OF THE LORD. Above the panel is a bell cote, which in turn supports a chimney stack. It is likely that the nave also functioned as a school room, since the remainder of the school would not have been able to accommodate the documented capacity of 160 pupils. A door in the south-western corner of the nave provides access from the school house (the home of the school mistress), while a door to the southeast led to the main corridor allowing access by pupils to and from the nave/classroom. The chancel was more elaborately ornamented than the nave, with a floor of glazed decorative tiles. The alter had, however, been removed in 2002. A small room on the south side of the chapel (probably the vestry) had a door in the south wall giving access to the corridor. The door had bracing in the form of a pair of truncated stars of David, representing the Holy Trinity. A second classroom was situated to the south of and at right angles to the chancel. It had corbels surviving from the original roof but the structure had recently been reroofed. The school house lies at the south-western corner of the nave. It is a two storey structure with two downstairs reception rooms, each with fireplaces, with another room interpreted as possibly a pantry or kitchen. Upstairs there are two bedrooms, each with fireplaces, and another room now being used as a bathroom. A porch on the north side of the school house would have allowed direct access to the nave/classroom. {2}{3}