inner–london schools 1918–44 a thematic study - English Heritage

Fig. 40: The Beachcroft Buildings, Cable Street, L BTower Hamlets (LCC AD, 1892-93; dem.). These earlyLCC tenement blocks were products of the Housing forthe Working Classes Act of 1890 and pre-dated theformation of the Housing of the Working Classes branchof the Architect's Department in 1893 (LCC photographreproduced in Beattie 1980).Fig. 41: North elevation of London Fields School,L B Hackney (LCC AD, 1921-23). A similar viewwas published in the LCC's The London EducationService, captioned 'A return to a simple style'.The stark corridor elevation, with its widelyspacedwindows, was chosen over the moregenerous fenestration of the classroom elevations.(DP070347).Fig. 42: The Juniors' and Infants' Department ofHuntingfield Road, L B Wandsworth (LCC AD, 1920-25; dem.). A single-storey, pavilion-plan school, for theLCC Roehampton estate and designed by J.M. Scott(DP070359).Fig. 43: A more informal, vernacular-inflectedmode was attempted at the contemporaryMellitus School, L B Hammersmith & Fulham(LCC AD, 1921-22). (DP070348)in building and to abandon elaborate tricks of style, [bringing] English architecture asclose as it ever came to the radicalism of W.R. Lethaby’. 67The schools designed under George Topham Forrest, Architect to the LCC from 1919-35, continued this tradition of making virtue out of necessity: it is possible to see the LCC‘triple-decker’ elementary school as a board school deliberately stripped of its baroquedetailing and silhouette. London Fields School (1921-23) was illustrated in the LCCpublication The London Education Service as an example of ‘the modern schools wherea return has been made to a severe and simple style. Here everything is sacrificed toutility and comfort’. 68 The Architect noted that the building was ‘quite distinct from theusual type of school building in London’, from which Forrest was ‘evidently determinedto break away’. 69 It is unclear to what degree Forrest was directly involved with schools,and how much autonomy was enjoyed by the divisional architect. Nevertheless, TheArchitect’s observation holds: the flat-roofed corridor elevations of London Fields and its© ENGLISH H ER I TAG E 43 - 20 0945