A Board school for girls, designed by W.H. Higginbottom in 1894 and completed in 1896. A textbook example of a central hall plan. A buttressed brick building with an ornate stone entrance porch in the ‘Queen Anne’ style. Stone lintels with brick hoodmoulds. Internally pleasingly complete, with doors, partition, floor surfaces and roof structures surviving. Of particular interest is the unusual pulpit in the central hall. Boundary wall and gate survive, as do the covered playgrounds and outside toilets, the latter a particular rarity. (NCC Schools Survey 2004)(1)

Elaborate stone door surround with moulded and fluted pilasters. Carved stone above the overlight reads "ARNOLD SCHOOL BOARD GIRLS SCHOOL". The pediment above has a carved shiled with the date A.D.1896. Windows to the porch were still original timber sashes in May 2022. The porch and the eaves to the flanking gables have a dogtooth design in brick and stone. Gables also have decorative stone kneelers. Now in commercial use accommodating various businesses inlcuding a carehome.(2)

Board Schools (1870 to 1903). All Board schools were built as a result of the 1870 Education Act. They form part of the very first phase of large-scale country wide investment in educational services. This was a momentous point in the history of the country as well as the county that marked the beginning of the compulsory education system. Board school buildings are generally of good architectural quality for the time and have a distinct appearance that is readily associated with both heritage and the education system of the county. They are often in highly focal locations that may contribute to the local townscape and sense of place. In Nottinghamshire they were designed by a variety of architects. The pre-eminent architects are unlikely to have produced more than one or two schools so it should be assumed, until otherwise proven, that each one is unique. (1)

The expansion of Arnold from a rural village to a northern suburb of Nottingham took place in the second half of the C19 and was prompted by the development of the framework knitting industry and the Home Brewery on Mansfield Road, founded in 1875 and closed in 1996. In 1775 the village was entirely surrounded by forests and had a population of less than 500, but by 1820 the population was 2,768 and by 1891 it was 8,757. Arnold was the location of the first Luddite riots in 1811, when 63 knitting frames were destroyed. The 1870 Education Act prompted the construction of two new board schools. A third board school, Church Drive Primary School for girls, was added in 1896. The school was designed by a local architect, William Herbert Higginbottom (1868-1929), on the standard central hall plan developed by E.R. Robson for the London Board Schools. A comparison of the present layout with the 1911 OS map indicates that little change has been made to the plan.
A girls' board school of 1896 by W.H. Higginbottom of Arnold. The school has a rectangular footprint aligned east-west, with the entrance to the west facing Church Drive. It is constructed predominately of red brick laid in Flemish bond under plain-tiled gabled roofs, of which there are nine at right angles to each other surrounding the gabled roof of the central east-west hall. The building is single-storeyed throughout. The main entrance block has a hipped roof and a pedimented stone surround to the doorway, with moulded pilasters, scrolls and finials. Inside the pediment there is a shield inscribed 'A.D. 1896', and below is the inscription 'ARNOLD SCHOOL BOARD / GIRLS SCHOOL'. To the right and left are twin eight-pane horned sashes. Flanking the entrance block are taller gables with dentilated eaves courses and sash windows with artificial stone lintels. Behind the entrance block is the taller west gable of the central hall, which is fitted with UPVC windows in the gable head. The north and south elevations of the building are composed of twin central gables flanked by narrower and lower gables either side. They have dentilated eaves courses and brick piers, but no other decoration. Most of the windows on the north, south and east sides have been replaced with UPVC. The east elevation has three gables of different pitches, the central one with tall UPVC windows lighting the former headteacher's office in the only first-floor room in an otherwise single-storeyed building. In the 1980s a single-storey extension was added against the east elevation, of rendered brick under a concrete-tiled hipped roof.
The school retains its brick walls and iron railings. There are two pairs of entrance piers on the west side, with moulded stone cappings.
The interior has a simple layout of an east-west central hall with four classrooms to the north and south, small secretary's and staff offices at the west end and cloakrooms and toilets at the east end. The hall has four timber trusses to the roof with cast-iron braces between the principals and collars, above which the roof is boarded, and three gabled dormers to the north and south. The classrooms leading off either side of the hall have glazed screens, which allowed the headteacher to look into them from the balustraded timber balcony at the east end of the hall, reached via a narrow closed-well timber staircase. The head's room is extremely plain, with a gas fire fitted in place of the original open fireplace. Fireplaces have also been removed from the classrooms, which now have suspended polystyrene ceilings and are devoid of any interior decoration.
Arnold School has a standardised plan, developed some twenty-five years earlier; it is not of early date for the building type; it does not have group value with other listed buildings; and it has no known association with a famous person. This, in combination with the average architectural quality, means it lacks the special architectural or historic interest required to fulfil the criteria for listing. SOURCES http://www.ng5.org.uk (accessed on 20 March 2009). R. King and J. Russell, A History of Arnold (1913). Nikolaus Pevsner and Elizabeth Williamson, Buildings of England. Nottinghamshire (2nd edn 1979), 57-9.M. Seabourne and R. Lowe, The English School, Vol. II, 1870-1970 (1977). (3)

Historic England, 2021, National Record of Historic Environment (Digital archive). SNT5271.

<1> NCC, 2004, NCC Schools Survey (DR2817) 2004 (Unpublished document). SNT5343.

<2> J Buckley (NCC), Observations by Janine Buckley MA (NCC) (Personal comment). SNT5239.

<3> W. Wilson, 2009, English Heritage Listing File (Unpublished document). SNT6304.