Central Girls' School, New Inn Hall Street
The above picture was drawn by Hervey Rutherford in 1900 and appeared in The Builder of 18 May 1901. The accompanying text reads:
CENTRAL GIRLS' SCHOOL, Oxford.
This building has been erected for the Oxford School Board, to accommodate about 300 girls, and is situated in New Inn Hall-street. It also contains a cookery centre and a pupil teachers' centre.
The school has a stone front, and the roof is covered with Yorkshire stone slates.
Messrs. Kingerlee & Sons, of Oxford, were the builders, and Mr. Leonard Stokes the architect. The drawing is exhibited at the Royal Academy.
The Central School for Girls (founded in about 1797) was taken over by the Oxford School Board in 1898, when it was occupying the old Wesleyan Chapel in New Inn Hall Street. The school board bought another site in that street from Balliol College for a new, purpose-built school building: it was designed by Leonard Stokes and described by Pevsner as "not really like any other Oxford building". The girls moved in towards the end of 1900, and the building was formerly opened by Sir William Anson in January 1901.
The school moved up to Gipsy Lane in Headington in 1959, becoming Cheney County Secondary Girls' School, and its former building is now part of St Peter's College.