25057

 

II  

Designated  

19/03/2001  

19/03/2001  

Bryn Heulwen and Monmouth Montessori School  

 

Monmouthshire  

Llangattock-Vibon-Avel  

Monmouth  

Llangattock-Vibon-Avel  

345750  

215922  

 

Standing on its own in a rectangular plot on the SW side of the lane between Llangattock-Vibon-Avel and Newcastle, approximately 250m NNE of the Church of St Cadoc.  

Education  

 

Built by the Rolls family of Llangattock, probably in the 1870s; and probably designed by T.H.Wyatt.  

A school with integral master's house, designed in an expressive domestic Gothic style and built of snecked rubble with red tiled roofs, red terracotta finials and red brick chimneys. It has an elaborated cruciform plan on a WNW-ESE axis, with the master's house at the SE end a shallow T-plan backing onto the end of the school. The N front is an asymmetrical 1½-storey composition with 3 separate and unequal gables, the outer half-hipped and all with oversailing barge-boarded eaves and terracotta finials. The roof carries down to a low level between the second two gables, forming an entrance lobby which has a doorway to the left and 2 small square small-paned casements to the right, and on the slope of the roof above this is a hipped 4-light dormer window with similar glazing. To the left is a wide gable which has a large transomed 4-light window with a tile-hung tympanum and a chamfered segmental-headed surround, and a triple-slotted stone ventilator in the apex. The gable at the right-hand end is set back, smaller, with a half-hipped roof, and contains a transomed 3-light window like that in the centre gable. Beyond this, and strongly set back, is a small gabled wing in generally similar style. At the left end is the 1½-storeyed half-hipped gable of the house, which has 2 altered windows at ground floor and a 2-light casement above, in the same style as the windows of the school, and at ground floor is clasped by small wings with hipped roofs. The main features of the SE facade of the house are a central half-hipped gabled projection which has coupled windows at ground floor, a 3-light window at 1st floor and a side-wall chimney on the left; an open porch in the angle at the base of this, with a stone plinth and arch-braced posts carrying a hipped roof, and an inner doorway with a board door and a side-window; and a wide diagonally-set rectangular bay window at the corner of the wing to the left. At the rear the school has a half-hipped gabled wing in the angle with the house, and the roof of its main range carries down to form an open verandah formerly of 3 bays but now reduced to 2 (the roof now furnished with 2 large skylights), the 1st having been enclosed and incorporated with a modern glazed lean-to added to the back of the gabled W wings.  

Alterations to the school include the insertion of hung ceilings which now conceal all but the bottom of the original open roof trusses.  

Included for its historical associations with the Rolls family of Llangattock and The Hendre, and as an interesting essay in the High Victorian "Modern Gothic" style pioneered by William Morris and Philip Webb.