Exterior
College buildings, rubble stone with tooled sandstone quoins and Caen limestone dressings, steep slate roofs and altered stone chimneys. Two storeys and attic, main front to S, a single range with ridge octagonal lantern, flanked by coped gabled projections, and with principal's house at left end, and former chapel to right end, connecting with side wall of 1931 chapel aligned N-S.
Main range in severe C14 Gothic style. with ashlar windows and iron casements. Seven coped-gabled eaves dormers with narrow paired ogee lights and tilting latticed heads; big stone chimneys at right angles to wall-face each end. Fourteen first-floor narrow ogee cusped single-light windows linked by sill course. Ground floor has 3 pointed traceried 2-light windows to left, then 3 square-headed longer cross-mullioned windows with cusped top lights, hoodmoulds, and relieving arches. Doorway to right with similar square head and top-lights, but over pointed chamfered doorway with ledged door and iron hinges. Cusping of top lights is ogee. Plinth is stepped up under 3 left windows. Octagonal lantern was originally open, now closed in copper-sheet. Roof is hipped at N end down to lower ridge of projecting right gable.
Right gable has big first floor 4-light window with flat-head, hoodmould, cusped top lights and mid-height transom, over similar 5-light ground floor window, divided 1-3-1, and with string course stepped over as hoodmould. Ground floor buttress to each side wall.
Left gable has 3-light window to attic, 2 cusped single light windows on first floor and window of 3 cusped lights on ground floor with relieving arch.
The principal's house projects to left, with parapet on E side and right half of S front, gable to S front left. E side has single light and 2-light window on first floor and, on ground floor, shouldered centre doorway with ledged door and strap hinges flanked to each side by stone-mullioned window with ogee cusping and iron lattice glazing, in added lean-to conservatory. S end has single light over 2-light to right, and 3-light each floor under gable to left, with shaped heads to all but single light. C20 aluminium glazing. The W side has external chimneybreast to right, gables centre and left over 3-light windows, ground floor centre mullion-and-transom window with cusped heads to lights. C20 conservatory to right. Stone chimneys on ridge and at N end.
To right of right gable is the first chapel, low and modest with centre buttress and 2 square-headed transomed and mullioned windows with cusped top lights.
Chapel of 1931 at right angles to ante-chapel, Decorated Gothic style with ogee tracery, rock-faced local sandstone with Yorkshire Morley sandstone quoins and Doulting stone dressings. Nave and chancel with coped gables, cross finials, side-wall parapets, pointed windows with hoodmoulds, and buttresses between bays. S side has 2 nave bays with 2-light windows, plinth, moulded string courses at sill level and under parapet. Similar lower 2-bay chancel, with single lights, and E end pointed 3-light flanked by 2 single lights, the sill course stepped under 3-light and over a blank plaque. Chancel N of 2 bays, nave N of 6 bays. End buttresses are gabled. W end has fine window, 2-light closely flanked by single lights all under a big pointed hoodmould linked to parapet string course. Plaque below sill course. Single bay to nave S with moulded pointed S door.
Rear of old chapel has parallel range with no S windows but single W light.
NE wing behind appears to be of 2 builds, 1847 to left, 1860 to right. Left 2-bay section has ridge stack, gable to right with small attic casement pair, first and ground floor ashlar 3-light mullion-and-transom window with cusped heads. Similar 2-light to ground floor left and small 2-light under eaves left. Some iron lattice glazing.
Added 1860 range has same ridge line but higher eaves, 2-storey, with big corbelled centre first floor stack on mid-buttress. Six 2-light flat-headed plain windows above and 4 4-light windows below, the lights all iron with very small panes. Small end stacks.
At right angles is c1910 Archbishop Childs Hall with coped gables and open square lantern on roof, with ogee dome and finial. Rock-faced stone walls, ashlar big mullion and 2 transom windows, 2-light, 3-light, 2-light and big canted bay with parapet and 1-1-3-1-1 lights. Small-paned glazing. End wall has 2 single lights and a mid buttress and an armorial plaque between. Rear has 4 2-light windows as on front.
Rear of main range has 14 first floor plain square headed narrow windows and 7 hipped dormers with 2-light windows and iron glazing. Rear wings to both sides of rear court altered in C20.