Small single storey building built of cruciform plan.
No CA
LLHA0143
Small single storey building built of cruciform plan. Knapped flint with red brick dressings beneath a steeply pitched clay-tiled roof with decorative bargeboard and unusual triangular window in gable. Built in c.1862 as a ‘National School’. It was extended incrementally, first along the southern boundary in the late 19th century and then to the north in the early 20th century. It was renamed Patcham Council School in 1919 when it came under local authority control. It had a maximum capacity of 150 pupils by 1932. It has since been extended to a much greater degree and is now a local authority special needs school. The later extensions are of no special interest.
i A good, simple example of a local style and materials applied to a national form of building. The various later extensions are of lesser or no interest.
i National schools were founded in 1811 in England and Wales by the National Society for Promoting Religious Education. They provided elementary education, in accordance with the teaching of the Church of England, to the children of the poor. They were mostly absorbed into the state school system by the end of the 19th century. The first one in Brighton was in Church Street in 1829.
ii The original flint building makes a very positive contribution to the townscape in a section of Old London Road otherwise dominated by trees and hedges.
ii This is a comparatively rare surviving example of a National School building in Brighton & Hove and designed to respect the local context.
i Externally the original building remains largely as first built with the exception of replacement windows.
ii The building remains in school use.
2015
