Details
This list entry was subject to a Minor Amendment on 21June 2023 to amend the name and address, and to reformat the text to current standards
NZ22NW
634-1/5/122
BISHOP AUCKLAND
SOUTH CHURCH ROAD (East side)
King James I Academy
Middle Building
(Formerly listed as King James I School, Middle School)
GV
II
Formerly known as: Bishop Auckland Girls' Grammar School SOUTH CHURCH ROAD.
King James I Girls' Grammar School, now Bishop Auckland Comprehensive School and community centre. Dated 1910. MATERIALS: snecked stone with horizontal tooling to ashlar plinth, quoins and dressings. Lakeland slate roof with stone copings and wood lanterns.
PLAN: E-plan with hall in large east wing. Free Jacobean style. Classroom and office blocks two storeys, three windows; one-storey links; hall one high storey, seven windows.
EXTERIOR: south elevation to drive. East block has projecting pedimented centre with rusticated pilaster strips supporting open pediment. Round-headed window over porch. Double panelled doors in porch. Porch has wide keyed open arches at side, plain lintel at front where former roof linked with similar porch on toilet block opposite (qv) forming covered walk, and hipped roof. Three-light windows in flanking bays with stone mullions and ground-floor transoms, plus first-floor band, and top cornice.
Stair and library wing set back to left has two lower storeys with quoins, and bands at ground-floor lintel, first-floor and eaves levels. Mullioned windows, and top parapet with flat stone coping on plain balusters on scooped link to corner pilasters.
Central classroom and office block has giant pilasters framing bays, the central with open pediment, and four-light mullioned windows, with transoms on ground floor, first-floor band, and top cornice. Stair wing set back at left similar to corresponding stair near east end.
West wing has three-light mullion and transom window set at right of long wall, with quoins and top cornice. Rain water heads dated 1910. Roofs have tall ridge ventilators over hall, laboratory and library, open ogee arches under pyramid roof over library, ogee dome over hall and laboratory, the latter with louvres. Tall boiler house chimney is square stone tower with tapered pilasters flanking arched top stage, pronounced batter and swept low-pitched coping, rear east of central block. Corniced ashlar chimneys on west wing.
Rear courtyard elevation shows hall wing breaking forward at left with high windows in bays defined by wide pilasters, and ramped parapet. Four gabled classrooms in aisles to hall, and two-storey gabled wing at hall end with impost band to high Diocletian window over ground floor with small two-light window. Central two-storey gabled laboratory projection has two-light windows flanking three-light in central panel, the upper with round head and dripstring below large carved coat of arms of Durham County Council. One-storey block at right. Linking corridors have elliptical stone arches over doors, with plain stone surrounds, the left with GIRLS inscribed, and mullioned windows.
INTERIOR shows plaque in vestibule commemorating opening by Mrs Walter Runciman on 5 October 1910, with motto NON SIBI SED ALIIS/ BISHOP AUCKLAND GIRLS COUNTY SCHOOL and DCC. Brown faience dado throughout corridors and stair wells. Hall has half-glazed screens to flanking classrooms, arcaded end upper galleries now glazed, and queen post roof on carved corbelled braces.
Listing NGR: NZ2137829547
