Description

A E Purdie, 1896; additions circa 1930. 2-storey, L-plan conventual buildings, including chapel; additional 1930s wing forming U-plan; single storey ranges forming enclosed cloister. Squared and snecked sandstone with bull-faced long and short quoins; polished dressings. Cusped windows to 1896 buildings.

W (CHAPEL) RANGE: 2-storey chapel with steep-pitched roof; accommodation wing adjoining to S. Chapel: birdcage bellcote to S gablehead; carved stone crucifix to N gablehead; hoodmoulded bipartite windows at 1st floor level; rose window to N gable; hoodmoulded pointed-arched window to S gable. Hoodmoulded bipartite windows to both floors of accommodation wing.

N RANGE: regularly disposed single windows to both floors; boarded door. E (1930) RANGE: single storey lean-to range with round-arched windows to inner court; bipartite windows at rendered 1st floor. Irregular disposition of windows to rendered E elevation. Variety of fixed lying-pane and leaded windows, and small-pane sash and case windows. Grey and grey-purple slate roofs; heavy coping to ridge and gablehead stacks of 1896 buildings; terracotta ridging; gabletted skewputts to chapel; coped and rendered stacks to 1930s wing; decorative wrought-iron finials.

INTERIOR: vaulted chapel now subdivided into 2, each containing marble and plaster crocketted reredos; hoodmoulded doorways; boarded doors with iron fixtures; leaded glass windows with blue stained galss borders. Plain corridors and rooms; decorative radiator to main corridor; turned timber balusters.

GATEPIERS AND BOUNDARY WALLS: coped gatepiers; high coped boundary wall to street.

Statement of Interest

Ecclesiastical buildings (RC), no longer in use as such. The convent became newsworthy in 1938 after the expulsion of 5 extern sisters. A E Purdie of Canterbury was also responsible for Our Lady of Loretto & St Michael (RC), Musselburgh (1903).

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  [(Bedfordshire, Huntingdon and Peterborough)] [By (author) Nikolaus Pevsner] published on (January, 1968)
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