The building is Grade II* listed and the chimneys are
mentioned in the listing description at the English Heritage website (visit
link):
"Former Parish School and Church House (now Buddhist
Temple). 1868-70, architect William Butterfield, contractor Foster of
Whitefriars. Red Fareham bricks, blue, black and white brick, English bond,
banding and polychrome diaper work to top storey, Bath stone bands and
dressings. Blue Welsh slate roofs with red ridge tiles, set behind stone-coped
parapets; tall gabled roof at right, with varied subsidiary gables, central 9
flue chimney with linked octagonal shafts, moulded stone bases, on tall
crow-stepped chimney breast. 3 storeys above basement, larger-scale to right
of entrance, with taller floors, and top storey treated as attic. Restricted
corner site, 60 feet by 70 feet, with front area, and small central courtyard.
Former church house to left of main front entrance, which runs beneath the
frontage, into the courtyard. School to right, with classrooms stacked
vertically, adults in basement, girls and infants on upper ground and first
floors, boys on second floor, with secondary entrance around corner on
Marylebone Passage.
Late 13th century early Decorated Gothic style.
Irregular 5 bay main facade. Off centre, narrow, parapet-gabled 3 storey porch,
with narrow projecting buttresses flanking, on ground floor, moulded chamfered
stone-arch with dripmould, closed by reset original iron gates and modern glazed
timber doors. First floor has narrow coupled sash windows, with horizontal bars,
beneath segmental brick header arch. Second floor has two recessed sash windows,
with stone head and inner trefoil beneath cusped oval recess housing cross.
Diaper work blue and red header spandrel, the whole flanked by tall stone
colonettes and moulded stone dripmould. To left of porch, coupled narrow wooden
sash windows beneath segmental heads, second floor has arched stone dripmould
over left window, and stone parapeted gable above. To right of porch the
schoolrooms, with 2 triple windows, basement, upper ground floor and first
floors, large triple second floor attic window. Basement windows beneath
segmental arches; upper ground and first floor windows have splayed stone
ledges, narrow triple sashes separated by tall stone colonettes, supporting
chamfered rectangular heads and lintols, with inner moulded trefoil heads.
Second floor windows have narrow sashes, in deep reveals below splayed stone
heads with inner trefoils, 2 light central window of tall sashes, separated by
tall colonettes, outer stone lancet heads inner trefoils, lunette with inner
cinquefoil, chamfered stone arched outer surround. Elaborate cross-pattern
diaper work above stone band at cill level, and infilling parapeted gabled end
and side dormers facing Marylebone Passage. Entrance beneath moulded stone arch
with dripmould, porch closed in by modern doors. Rear elevation has flat
parapeted roof at left, and gable at right.
INTERIOR: Simply finished, originally plain plaster, and
colourwashed brickwork. Second floor classroom has exposed arch-braced tie beam
trusses. First floor classroom now decorated as Buddhist shrine. Ground floor
classroom with raised end now partitioned off as office. Basement former
classroom retains original fireplace, with chamfered wood surround supporting
shelf on curved jowls. Original 6 and 8 panel doors to many rooms. Twin leaf
framed and battened doors with scrolled iron hinges to entrance from Marylebone
Passage.
HISTORY: The school completed the seminal group of
buildings in Margaret Street, designed by Butterfield. All Saints Church,
opposite, was a landmark both in the Gothic Revival and in Ecclesiology. Its
clergy house and choir school, built at the same time, between 1849 and 1853,
created a tough urban architecture of brick, with polychrome diaper decoration,
and stone banding. The parish school, opened in 1870, cost ?5000, and is in an
assertive style, more demonstrative than with the earlier buildings, with which
it nevertheless shows an affinity by association, by architect, and group
value."