Upper Drive, Cottesmore St Mary School, Hove

Conservation Area (CA)

No CA.

Local Listing Reference

LLHA0219.

Description

Originally a private boys' prep school but now a Catholic Primary School since 1950. Two storeys. Built c1896 to the designs of A Burnet-Brann and Ernest R Barron of London.

A handsome, heavily detailed building in Free Jacobean style. Red brick with stone dressings and mullions and steep clay-tiled roofs surmounted by cupolas.

Extended over time in a largely sympathetic manner.

A. Architectural, design and artistic interest 

ii. A good quality example of a purpose-built Edwardian private school on a particularly large scale with notable ornamental detail.

v. Clear aesthetic interest resulting from an architectural design in a Free Jacobean style with ornamental features.

B. Historic and evidential interest

ii. The building illustrates the role that private education for the boys of wealthy families, funded by private benefactors, played in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

Many proprietary schools were established in the 19th century, which led to Brighton being dubbed ‘School Town’. In its subsequent period as a Catholic school, it illustrates the historic interest of the Upper Drive to Catholicism in Brighton & Hove.

It was the site of the Convent of the Sacred Heart from 1878, which included a girls' school which expanded and eventually became the Cardinal Newman secondary school.

C. Townscape interest

ii. The building’s distinctive roofline and open setting are notable from the busy Old Shoreham Road and the school has a strong and positive street presence on the Upper Drive.

E. Rarity and representativeness

ii. An unusual – and unusually large – locally surviving example of a purpose-built late Victorian prep school.

F. Intactness

i. The school retains a sense of completeness in terms of its architectural design and its open setting, despite some later extensions and window replacements.

ii. The building remains in school use.

Date of Inclusion

Pre-2015.