innerâlondon schools 1918â44 a thematic study - English Heritage

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Fig. 24: Gardening at Bentworth Road School, L B Hammersmith & Fulham.(L M A : SC /PHL /02/0234 -29:; City of London, London Metropolitan Archives).L B Lambeth, pupils built concrete maps with raised coastlines, allowing water to form theoceans. 47 The open-air school dissolved the boundaries between indoors and outdoorsthrough open-fronted classrooms and shelters, informally grouped in gardens. The RachelMcMillan Open-air was described by one of its teachers in 1923:‘The Open-Air School is a garden, around the walls of which are built long, lowshelters. The garden belongs to the children, and in planning it we must sweepaway all our own grown-up, pre-conceived ideas’. 48At the LCC, such thinking gradually diffused from the open-air schools, which were runfrom the Special Education Section as something of a continuing experiment, to themainstream elementary schools. Isolated attempts made to avoid the unrelieved seas oftarmac surrounding most maintained schools. Schools serving suburban housing estatestended to have larger sites, but landscaping, and gardens still remained comparativelyrare. Occasional exceptions may have been due to the initiative of individual headmastersand teachers rather than LCC policy. A formal ‘Dutch garden’ was originally laid-outat Athelney Street elementary school, L B Lewisham of 1921-23, children maintaineda vegetable plot at the Avenue School, L B Southwark of 1937-38, and gardens atBentworth Road, L B Hammersmith & Fulham (1929), and Huntingfield Road, L BWandsworth (1922, 1925, 1931).Elsewhere, high land values and problems with land acquisition left cramped urban sites.On occasion, the Council was able to expand a school site through compulsory purchaseof neighbouring properties—as at Hanover Street, L B Islington of 1931-32. 49 In 1937,the LCC was forced to acquire more land and redesign the Dog Kennel Hill school, L BSouthwark (1937, Superintending Architect H.F.T. Cooper), after the Board of Educationrejected the ‘cramped’ initial design for a one-acre site. The subsequent school included© ENGLISH H ER I TAG E 43 - 20 0935
a spacious playground with retained mature trees. 50 The importance of play and physicalhealth in infant development, long advocated by the voluntary play centre movement andthe Playing Fields Association, was first recognised in private schools such as Susan Isaacs’Malting House school, Cambridge, where jungle gyms, swings or sandpits were provided.Maxwell Fry followed suit at the Kensal House Day Nursery, L B Kensington & Chelsea(1936-38). Some playgrounds were opened to provide evening recreation: from 1935-39,a total of 80 ‘games centres’ were established in London playgrounds. 51StyleIn non-state maintained schools, the architectural appearance of a school was less theinclination of its architect than a carefully considered message from the governors ormanagers of a school to its students and parents, catchment area and competitors.The predominance of such a client in the choice of architectural style can be seen inthe way architects occasionally adopted differing idioms to suit each commission. W.G.Newton’s 1933 science block for Marlborough College, Wiltshire (grade II) is a responseto the headmasters brief for an ‘elegant factory’, and presents a contrast to Newton’scontemporary neo-Georgian Merchant Taylors’ School, Middlesex.Fig 25: Science block, Marlborough College (W.G. Newton, 1933).(© Elain Harwood).The Gothic Revival, much favoured by public and grammar schools in the 19 th century,had lost its moral force by 1902, but this did not stop building committees pressing thestyle into service until well into the 1930s. The huge Bolton School, Lancashire, of 1918-29 was designed in the perpendicular style to the designs of C.T. Adhead with fundingfrom W.H. Lever, with no fewer than three quadrangles. Tudor was the order of the dayat Eastbourne College, East Sussex, where the architect Geoffrey Wilson was briefedin 1921 to provide ‘all the points regarded by the committee as essential, viz: a centraltower, cloisters and oriel windows’. 52 As late as 1938, the otherwise modernist MiddlesexCounty Council could not resist a symmetrical quadrangle, dressed in a heavy Tudor, fortheir Tottenham Grammar School. 53 The northern extension to the Sir Walter St John’s© ENGLISH H ER I TAG E 43 - 20 0936
Page 2 and 3: Research Department Report Series 4
Page 11 and 12: The final part of the report proper
Page 13 and 14: would best be considered within the
Page 15 and 16: © ENGLISH H ER I TAG E 43 - 20 09
Page 17 and 18: IntroductionThe provision of school
Page 19 and 20: The augmentation of state nursery p
Page 21 and 22: central schools, either newly built
Page 23 and 24: Fig 8: Model of Impington, possibly
Page 25 and 26: single-storey brick buildings, redu
Page 27 and 28: 33 Board of Education 1931a, 58.34
Page 29 and 30: IntroductionFrom 1870 until 1990, t
Page 31 and 32: Fig. 12: SBL datestone from the Wes
Page 33 and 34: Fig. 14: The classroom pavilions at
Page 35 and 36: Fig. 18: Granton Road School, L B L
Page 37 and 38: considered no less important. Londo
Page 39 and 40: Fig. 22: Infants' Department of Ath
Page 41: module. 41 Stillman’s schools wer
Page 45 and 46: collegiate air of a preparatory sch
Page 47 and 48: Fig 32: Junior school classrooms at
Page 49 and 50: emain a “book-learnt” conceptio
Page 51 and 52: Fig 36: Herbert Francis Thomas Coop
Page 53 and 54: contemporaries, with their widely s
Page 55 and 56: Endnotes1 On the abolition of the L
Page 57 and 58: 60 Board of Education 1938.61 Saler
Page 59 and 60: The nursery schoolCase studies:•
Page 61 and 62: designs, the second of 1937 with Ma
Page 63 and 64: Fig. 52: Webb Street School elevati
Page 65 and 66: Fig. 55: North Hammersmith Central
Page 67 and 68: The secondary schoolCase studies:
Page 69 and 70: Fig 59: Maze Hill elevation to the
Page 71 and 72: admired ‘more than any other arch
Page 73 and 74: grants in the form of building subs
Page 75 and 76: accommodated 440 junior children in
Page 77 and 78: The open-air schoolCase studies:•
Page 79 and 80: three open-air schools opened by th
Page 81 and 82: Fig 71: The buildings of the Geere
Page 83 and 84: As Frederick Rose predicted in 1908
Page 85 and 86: L B Wandsworth, by providing ‘roo
Page 87 and 88: LAN ANCE SURVEY PLANwithout mainten
Page 89 and 90: Endnotes1 LCC minutes 17.7.1928, p.
Page 91 and 92: 44 Catholic Hall, Appleton Road, El
Page 93 and 94:
© ENGLISH H ER I TAG E 43 - 20 098
Page 95 and 96:
Board of Education 1923 The differe
Page 97 and 98:
English Heritage 1993 General princ
Page 99 and 100:
Morrison, K. 1999 The workhouse: a
Page 101 and 102:
Whitbread N. 1972 The evolution of
Page 103 and 104:
Appendix 1: Gazetteer of extant pur
Page 105 and 106:
Original name Present Name & Addres
Page 107 and 108:
Page 109 and 110:
Page 111 and 112:
The S towag e pl anPeckham Park, 18
Page 113 and 114:
The en d hall pl anUpper North Stre
Page 115 and 116:
The b u t ter fly pl anAthelney Str
Page 117 and 118:
• Separate-block planning refers
Page 119 and 120:
Appendix 5: Glossary of school type
Page 121 and 122:
increasing popular after the 1926 a
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innerâlondon schools 1918â44 a thematic study - English Heritage