Historic School Coach House Gains Protected Status

A building at an independent school in Reading has been given protected status after being traced back to the late 19th century.

Tilehurst Road is lined with Victorian villas in red brick. One became St Edward's Prep & Nursery School for 2 to 11s in the 1940s.

The school's coach house was considered for Reading Borough Council's list of locally important buildings after a heritage assessment by conservation officer Burcu Can Cetin.

"St Edward's School, no 64, originally known as Ordsall, is dated 1891 and the architect was G W Webb.

"The brickwork of the coach house is mainly composed of only two colours, grey and red in bands with a pattern of red and cream brick below the eaves.

"The pattern is simpler than that of the house."

The coach house is understood to be the school's kitchen; the school has a maximum capacity of 186 pupils. St Edward's also made headlines in 2022 when it entered the Guinness World Records for creating the largest sentence from plastic bottles, declaring "There is only one Earth."

The listing was discussed at a planning committee meeting. Councillor Richard Davies said: "It looks like a really interesting, worthy building.

"It does also look like there's quite a lot of recent or contemporary modifications, that's just going off the photos.

"When buildings are listed nationally, they do take into account how much of the original building is there, if it's been modified out of all recognition, it's not listed, so are you standing by the fact that enough of the core of the original building is still around, and that the modern amendments haven't destroyed the value?"

Ms Can Cetin added: "When you perceive it from the street, the contours and the building lines are still legible with the original structure of the building, and its architectural detailing and everything is still there."

Cllr James Moore noted the coach house was nominated in 2023 and asked why the process took three years. A senior planning officer said Ms Can Cetin is the council's only conservation officer and also has to prepare conservation area appraisals.

Ultimately councillors unanimously approved adding the coach house at St Edward's Prep to the council's list of locally important buildings on October 7.

James Aldridge, Local Democracy Reporter