Building record 979/0/19 - The Reading Room

Built in 1850 as an infant school, with adjoining schoolmaster's house and pigsty to the rear. By 1877 it was also used as a reading room. It was used as the infants school until 1894. Locally listed building.

{1} Previously thatched, now concrete tile.

{2} Reasons for currently not Listing the Building
CONTEXT

English Heritage has received an application to list the former Reading Room in Great Brington. It is located in Great Brington Conservation Area. The building adjoins a 1.1 acre field where a development of up to twenty dwellings is being proposed, which may involve the demolition of the Reading Room.

HISTORY AND DETAILS

Great Brington Reading Room is thought to have been originally built as the village infant school around 1850. It is labelled as such on the 1885 Ordnance Survey Map which also shows the adjoining schoolteacher’s house and a pigsty. Great Brington Reading Room Society was established in 1877 to provide young men with a meeting place where they could read national and local newspapers and borrow books. It was run by a committee, chaired by the Rector, which organized its first supper in the infant school in 1881. After this it was decided to keep the building open as the Reading Room during the day to encourage more visitors to use it. The Society had initially met elsewhere in the village but in 1886 it was transferred to the building which it shared with the infant school until 1894 when the school moved into the National School at Little Brington. On the formal transfer on 21 December 1886, the 5th Earl Spencer talked of ‘the advantages of reading and of the changes which had taken pace in village life and tended to make the Reading Rooms more useful than ever.’ The building thus played a central role in village life since the mid-C19, and has more recently been used as a village hall.

The building, which is approximately rectangular on plan, has one storey plus an attic. It is constructed of local, roughly dressed ironstone and has a steeply pitched roof clad in concrete tiles (replacing the original thatched roof). The small schoolteacher’s house, adjoining the south gable end, is constructed of red brick and has a slate-clad roof. A gabled porch was added in 1968, and in 1993 a kitchen extension was built on the west side and the interior was refurbished.

DISCUSSION

The English Heritage Selection Guide for Education Buildings (April 2011) outlines how school buildings built before 1840 that survive in their original form will normally be already protected, and sometimes at high grades. After this date schools have to be well preserved and of good architectural quality to be listed. The survival of internal fittings is likely to add interest. Further to this, the Selection Guide for Culture and Entertainment (April 2011) describes village halls as modest buildings which are often disappointing internally. Village halls and institutes acquired architectural pretension when endowed by benefactors, reflected confident working communities (for instance, the miners’ halls in the north-east), or when they celebrated major events or anniversaries, such as coronations.

On the basis of the evidence to hand the Reading Room is not recommended for designation for the following principal reasons: * Architectural interest: the building is a standard example of a village school as opposed to one displaying distinctive architectural interest. The pleasing appearance of the attractive local ironstone has been lessened by the replacement of the original thatched roof with concrete tiles; * Alterations: a school of this date would have to survive with a higher degree of intactness to be considered for listing, whereas this building has been extended and the interior refurbished, resulting in the loss of fixtures and fittings that would have demonstrated its historic use as a school and reading room.

CONCLUSION

The Reading Room in Great Brington may be considered to have some local interest for its historic community function as a school, reading room and village hall, but it does not have special architectural and historic interest from a national perspective and should not be added to the statutory List.

<1> Daventry District Council, 2021, Great Brington Conservation Area Appraisal and Management Plan, Adopted March 2021, p. 56-7 (Policy Document). SNN112660.

<2> English Heritage, Designation Advice Report, Reading Room, Main Street, Great Brington (Report). SNN113190.

Record last edited

May 12 2025 9:36AM