Listed Building: ST MARYS HILL SCHOOL, COTTAGE AND GARDEN AND YARD WALLS (1376386)

CHESTER CITY (IM) SJ4065NE ST MARY'S HILL (North side) 595-1/6/344 16/09/91 St Mary's Hill School, Cottage and garden and yard walls (Formerly Listed as: ST MARY'S HILL St Mary's Hill School, former Schoolmaster's cottage & garden & yard walls) GV II School, cottage and walls. 1846. Flemish bond brown brick with grey slate roofs. EXTERIOR: one and 2 storeys. The schoolroom has a low sandstone plinth and 3 renewed casements in unaltered eared openings of painted stone. The west gable has a replaced stone-dressed window, kneelers to brick coping with former bellcote of corbelled stone, now truncated. The lower, narrower entrance-wing, west, has framed and boarded door and a 4-pane casement, each in a painted stone surround; the gable end has window of three 3-pane lights and a cross-loop in the gable; stone coping on north slope of gable; a parallel coach house wing adjoins, north, with boarded double doors, timber lintel and hayloft with boarded loading-door in painted stone surround. All surrounds are splayed and have eared lintels. The cottage forms a short south wing near east end of schoolroom. Porch in corner has framed and boarded door on long hinges with 4-pane overlight in painted stone surround; a 4-pane stone-lined casement, south, with a similar but shorter casement with gabled dormer above with stone coping on kneelers. Brick gable chimney has stone-capped plinth, 4 divided flues and corbelled brick cap. The rear yard has probably medieval coursed sandstone in lower part of side wall. Low sandstone wall to front garden. INTERIOR: the schoolroom has 6 quasi-hammerbeam trusses; gallery at east end with balustrade. The cottage has stone steps to partly rock-cut brick cellars with quarry floors; dogleg newel stair with stick balusters. The school and cottage form a well-composed group with St Mary's Centre (qv) and the Old Rectory now County Council Education Offices (qv). Stylistically the school and cottage suggest Thomas Jones as architect, to whom the adjoining Old Rectory is attributed. (Bartholomew City Guides: Harris B: Chester: Edinburgh: 1979-: 133). Listing NGR: SJ4054965836