SNN102362 - Archaeological Recording Brief, Military Road School, Northampton (Final Draft)

Military Road School is actually composed of three more-or-less self-contained schools, each with its own front entrance, the centre one providing four classrooms, a head teacher's room and cloakroom, and the main assembly hall for the schools. The South school for girls has four 3-bay classrooms, and a dividable hall, whilst the boys in the northern school also had four 3-bay classrooms with its own hall space, probably also dividable with a timber partition. The school was apparently originally built without cloakroom facilities and these were added piecemeal early on the building's life, as the detail and materials used are very similar. There are two phases of later alterations, the first c1950 was the addition of a kitchen, the second connected with the abolition of the external latrines, and building new internal lavatories for each sex in 1964. The latest phase is the provision of emergency fire escapes through forced doorways at the rear. The building is a fine example of a later Victorian Board School which has escaped any serious modifications or alterations, and as such in the opinion of this surveyor, merits Grade II listed status as a work of a significant local architect of the period, Charles Dorman.