Details
153/0/10017 NANTWICH ROAD
19-JUN-02 Police Training College
II
Ursuline convent and school. C1910. Designed in the Arts and Crafts style of the late C19 and early C20, derived from the work of Philip Webb. The building has architectural references to the French gothic (tracery and fleurs de lis) for the Ursuline nuns who founded the convent in 1906, and the Arts and Crafts Dutch/Queen Anne style with small-pane sash windows of mass housing of the early C20. Red/Brown brick in decorative header and Flemish bonds, moulded brick surrounds for doorways, in window arches and tall arched recesses to main facades. Carved stone panels and mouldings in gothic style in the entrance bay, above the doorway and window and in the gables; stone gable copings, and carved finials. Plain stone sills, lintels, sill bands. Timber ornamental barge boards to alternate dormer windows, grey slate roof.
L plan comprising a south and a west wing; 3 storeys plus attics. The main faÎade, south wing, faces south with 4 bays of 4, 3, 2 and 10 first-floor windows. Bays 1 and 3 project slightly and are gabled; the right-hand two windows of bay 4 are obscured by a 2-storey later addition. The entrance in bay 3 had a narrow doorway right, cross window left, tympana with cupsed tracery under semi-circular moulded string, diamond plane leaded lights. Bay 1: the tympana above the ground floor windows have carved panels with lilies (representing the French fleur-de-lis and the annunciation of the Virgin Mary)and defaced fountain stones at ground level. The lily motif is also displayed between windows, bay 4.
The left return, west wing, is of 4 bays, each with 2 paired windows in a full-height arched recess. A 3-storey staircase bay is set back, far left. The right bay has a stepped brick dormer gable, the windows divided by a central full-height chimney ornamented with a keyed arched recess.
The rear facade of each wing has paired windows in full-height round-arched recesses, and dormer windows, all lacking the ornamental detail of the facades. Two tall added staircase/lift towers added to north walling, and single-storey additions not included in the listing. The east gable end has mouldings as main facades, and a glazed double door right.
Interior: The main entrance opens into a staircase hall. The staircase has cast-iron balustrade with ramped handrail, balusters of reeded naturalistic design. South wing, east end ground floor: reported to have been pupils' chapel, has paired cusped lights to south windows and a blocked single light window in the rear wall. Corridor with blind arcading.
The Ursuline Sisters, a French order of nuns, founded a convent at Crewe in 1906; this building is not shown on the Ordnance Survey map of 1911 but is reported to have been built c1910 [Edge, p. 233]. The school was recognised as a secondary school by the Crewe Board of Education in 1922. In the second half of the C20 the building was converted to the Cheshire Constabulary Training Centre and Maintenance headquarters. At the time of listing the building had become the Police Training College, with extensive accommodation added to the north.
Refs. W H Chaloner: The Social and Economic Development of Crewe, 1950. B.Edge: The Old photographs series: Crewe, 1994 [shows a ridge stack on west wing, centre].
