Alternatively known as: Lodge & Gate Screen to Loughborough Grammar School, Leicester Road
Lodge and gate screen. 1852. By John Morris and Charles Hebson of Lambeth. Red brick with burnt header diapering and stone dressings. Coped gables and a parapeted slate roof. Tudor Gothic style. The 2-storey house is on an L plan with gables on the wing ends and a polygonal turret in the reentrant angle which emerges above the eaves level as an octagonal lantern turret with stone pyramidal roof. The windows are mainly 2- and 3-light stone mullion casements with hoodmoulds. There are small single-light windows to the turret with blocked openings to the lantern. At first floor facing the drive to the school is a carved panel of a quatrefoil framing the initials TB for Thomas Burton, the Founder. Beyond the gate screen is the entrance which has a central doorway in a 4-centred arch and a single-light window either side, all within the same hood mould. The lodge rear is similar and has a small single-storey wing including a C20 extension.
INTERIOR. The interior has mainly C20 fittings but retains the dog-leg staircase with angled balusters and newels with shaped heads. The screen has a 4-centred pedestrian archway either side of the drive, the walling ending in an octagonal gate pier with pyramidal cap echoing that of the turret. On the far side of the drive the arch ends in a small gabled building in similar style with window to front and door to rear.
HISTORY: Loughborough Grammar School was founded in 1495 following the bequest of Thomas Burton. The school was originally in the centre of the town but in 1852 the Trustees of the Burton Charity rebuilt it on the present large site known as the Burton Walks. The school and combined headmaster's and boarding house together with this lodge were designed by John Morris and Charles Hebson who in 1851 designed the Grammar School at Wimborne Minster (listed Grade ll) in a similar Tudor style. The school building and boarding house were listed grade II in the mid 1980's.
SUMMARY OF IMPORTANCE: This is a finely detailed and carefully designed lodge and gate screen of 1852. It is in the Tudor Gothic style which is up-to-date for institutional buildings of the period. There is a carefully combined rich combination of materials: red brick and burnt header diapering with stone dressings. Because of the fine design, including this use of varied materials, the lodge and gate screen is of definite quality and with the main buildings it forms a significant group of mid C19 school buildings, at an ancient grammar school, originally founded in 1495.