The School House, Longshoot Road, Lower Withington

This building was listed as “Curate’s cottage, Lower Withington” in “The Works of Ernest Newton” written by Newton’s son, William Godfrey Newton. The church, dedicated to St Peter, is a tin tabernacle, and was erected in 1891. It served as a chapel of ease to Prestbury and so came under the jurisdiction of its vicar, the Rev Reginald Edmund Broughton, who had earlier engaged Newton to design a new vicarage at Prestbury. The curate stayed at Lower Withington for five years, but when he left, the vicarage became the house of the schoolmaster in charge of the Church of England school, and was renamed The School House. The building is very much in the Cheshire vernacular style with much decorative brick and tile work and a black and white timbered porch under a catslide roof. It seems to be unrecognised by Pevsner and Historic England. [Richard Fletcher]