3-034-626 - The Print Collector/Heritage Images

The new grammar school at Reading, 1871. 'The new building...has been constructed...for the purpose of establishing at Reading a thoroughly efficient and useful school...[It] occupies, with the cricket-field and playgrounds, between ten and eleven acres. The style chosen has been the domestic Gothic, the material being a dull red brick relieved with terra-cotta. In the centre are the cloisters, from which a turret staircase leads to a large hall, 81 ft. by 26 ft. This handsome hall, with its open timber roof and stained-glass windows deeply recessed, forms the leading architectural feature of the school buildings. On each side of the central block are two masters' houses, only one of which is yet completed, each with five class-rooms, dining-rooms, and thirty dormitories, above which is a sick-ward. With the site, which cost £4000, the school will cost somewhat more than £25,000, the whole of which is not yet subscribed. The contractors were Messrs. Parnell and Son, of Rugby; and the architect, Mr. Alfred Waterhouse, has succeeded in designing a building which seems to answer its purpose and to be an ornament to the town'. From "Illustrated London News", 1871.