York Historic Environment Record

NMR Information:
No List Case: 503714/001

The school was built between 1939 and 1942, and was originally a technical school,it was funded by the Joseph Rowntree Village Trust and the North Riding Education Authority. The building was designed by Robert Hall, in consultation with Barry Parker, who was instrumental in the design of New Earswick village, and was opened by R A Butler, the President of the Board of Education.The original building is of brick and is largely single storey, with pantile roofs and some flat roofs to cloakrooms. The building is in a very modest Art Deco style, with some modernist elements.
The original core of the school consists of a south-facing single storey range of form rooms with a central entrance, a lower corridor behind, and connected to a quadrangle to the north. The buildings round the quadrangle are an assembly hall, now a library, at the south end, with specialist classrooms to either side and a gymnasium to the north. The specialist classrooms are large and well lit and include a workshop, laboratory, art room and housecraft room, all still in use. A flat, within the east range, intended for the girls to put into practice their domestic and home economics skills survives with some alterations. Cloakrooms for boys and girls are attached to the rear of the front range, and changing rooms to either side of the gymnasium. An internal corridor runs round the quadrangle which has been cut by a later cross range. To the west a former dining block and kitchen are now in different use and have been subsumed into later buildings. The boys cloakrooms have also been altered and later buildings are attached to them.
Internally the floor plan is largely unaltered. Some original doors and fitted cupboards remain, and most of the rooms have original ceilings including heating panels intended to aid air circulation. The exposed brickwork is painted in the corridors as in the original specification, and all the windows and floors are original. Some windows have been re-used where small extensions have been added to the original.
The school was extended in the late 1950s, with further expansion westwards in the 1960s and more buildings were added to the north of the site in the late 20th century.
The buildings were assessed for listing in 2007 due to plans to redevelop the school, but it did not meet the criterea fo listing for the following reasons:
Absence of architectural interest.
Extension and alteration of the fabric.
Absence of any internal features of note, such as art.
No strong claims to rarity of planning or purpose.
It is a later addition to the interesting planned settlement of New Earswick, and not part of the original conception. (1)
1 English Heritage Listing File Alison Clarke, 14-JUN-2007