Madras Voluntary Aided School

Cadw's description

Location

At the NW end of the village, 100m SW of the parish church.

History

Founded in 1811 by the second Lord Kenyon (date on building). It was the first purpose-built 'monitorial' school in Wales, named after the school in Madras, India, where Andrew Bell, a friend of Lord Kenyon, pioneered the monitorial system of education. The 1873 and 1900 Ordnance Surveys show the building divided into 2 units but without the present porch, which was a later addition. The roof structure is late C19, and therefore it is not certain whether the building originally had a thatch roof. The broad window openings also appear to be late C19. The school was extended at the rear in 1905, again in 1966-7 by Sir Percy Thomas & Sons, architects of Cardiff, and in 1999.

Exterior

Cottage orne style single-storey school of roughcast walls painted cream, wide small-pane windows and steep hipped thatch roof on wide boarded eaves. The symmetrical front has a central lower half-hipped porch. This has a 2-light small-pane window to the front, above which is a stone tablet with raised letters: 'Madras School founded by George 2nd Lord Kenyon 1811'. Replacement boarded doors are in the porch side walls. To the L and R each side has a 4-light and a 6-light window. In the rear, the R side has a later small-pane window carried above the eaves under a gable. The R-hand side has a similar but smaller window replaced in an earlier opening, and gable. In the centre is another gable, but its opening is obscured by the early C20 wing. This is roughcast painted cream, with tile roof and brick stack. Openings are all altered. Behind it is a 1960s extension in pale brick with flat roof, mostly now enveloped by a later and less sympathetic red-brick extension of 1999.

Interior

Now divided into 2 rooms, but probably originally a single room. Each side has 2 late C19 king-post trusses with raking struts, bolted rather than pegged, and boxed on the L-hand side. The underside of the roof is boarded.

Reason for designation

Listed for its special historical interest as an early estate school, the first in Wales to practise Andrew Bell's monitorial system, and for its architectural interest as a striking building of distinctive picturesque character that retains one of the few surviving thatch roofs in the district.