innerâlondon schools 1918â44 a thematic study - English Heritage

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Postscript: war and the Butler ActBetween 1-3 September 1939, 1,500,000 children were swiftly evacuated from innerLondon and the surrounding boroughs. The months that followed saw the occupationof school buildings by the Air Training Corps, the Women’s Royal Naval Service, firepatrols and other civil defence bodies. 76 Instead, the immediate educational need wasfor school accommodation, principally for nurseries for evacuees and the children ofwomen working in the munitions factories. Amongst various proposed schemes for therural ‘reception areas’ Birkin Haward’s design for a residential nursery of 1940 for theAssociation of Architects, Surveyors, and Technical Assistants was architecturally themost radical, based on pre-cast concrete arches over brick cross-walls and reminiscent ofLe Corbusier’s Maison le Week-end of 1935. 77Although the Board of Education announced an embargo on school building in lateSeptember 1939, it would be a mistake to conclude that thought about the organisationand large-scale construction of schools ceased during the war. 78 Post-war educationalreforms were first considered long before victory could be forecast with any confidence.The Board of Education published Education after the War in 1942, which formed thebasis for the organisational changes of introduced by the Butler Act of 1944.In January 1942, the Board established a committee, chaired by Robert Wood, toconsider standardised construction and layouts for the immediate post-war period ofrebuilding. That the post-war reconstruction agenda was set by those occupied by prewarreform can be seen from the choice of the two architects on the committee, DenisClarke Hall and C.G. Stillman. In 1944 the newly-formed Ministry of Education, eager todemonstrate an alternative to temporary huts, discussed building a prototype in Kentbut were thwarted by the governmental ban on building following the ‘little blitz’ of thatyear. 79By the end of the war, 25% of London’s schools had been demolished or seriouslydamaged, 27% had received moderate damage and the whole stock had been virtuallyFig 76: Birkin Haward's 1940 design for a 20-place residential nursery school (reproduced in the Builder,27 September 1940, p.302).© ENGLISH H ER I TAG E 43 - 20 0979
LAN ANCE SURVEY PLANwithout maintenance for the duration of hostilities. 80 This prompted a wider, and oftencritical, reappraisal of the school stock, which lumped in board schools and the recentcouncil schools alike: C.G. Stillman, from 1945 the county architect of Middlesex,pronounced them an ‘odd collection of old and obsolete schools, largely over-crowded,incapable of improvement and hopelessly inefficient in every way’. 81 Denis Clarke Hallrecalled in 1999, ‘the Butler Act of 1944 made pretty well every school in the county outof date’. 82 The London School Plan of 1947 adopted the same tabula rasa tone: ‘neithersites nor buildings, even of the best and most recent secondary schools, reach thestandards set by the Minister’s regulations’. 83The post-war challenges faced by those in the Ministry of Education and the localauthorities who found themselves undertaking school rebuilding programmes were‘unprecedentedly great’. 84 These included the educational demands of the Wood report,a near-bankrupt economy, and a significant rise in nursery and infant places (the childpopulation rose sharply from 1942 to 1948 for the first time since 1901). 85 The answerssometimes came from unexpected quarters, such as the war-time experience of StirratJohnson-Marshall (1912-81) and David Medd (1917-2009) researching, designing andimplementing decoys for the Camouflage Development and Training Centre at FarnhamCastle, which influenced their postwar work at Hertfordshire and later the Research Unitat the Ministry of Education. 86But the solutions taken forward after 1944—light and dry construction, prefabrication,standardisation of parts and separate-block planning—did not entirely emerge from theexpediencies of wartime improvisation. Lightly prefabricated construction was in usein London’s open-air schools from c.1908, and separate-block planning first employedaround the same time at Uffculme, again an open-air school. Those involved in thepost-war school-building programme had a tendency to downplay the progressiveinter-war precursors, which in fact offered tried-and-tested prototypes which could beeconomically developed on a large scale. The 1930s West Sussex schools of C.G. Stillman(see page 33) were the basis of the post-war schools built on the 8’3” bay module,including Stillman’s Middlesex schools and the LCC schools of the 1950s under DeputyArchitect Leslie Martin.Fig 77 (left): Charlton Park Open-Air School, L B Greenwich (LCC AD, 1929; dem.).Fig 78 (right): The I L E A special school which replaced it in 1964-66 retained the separate-block layout.(Ordnance survey plans of 1954 and 1970.© Crown Copyright. All rights reserved. English Heritage 100019088. 2009).© ENGLISH H ER I TAG E 43 - 20 0980
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Research Department Report Series 4
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The final part of the report proper
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would best be considered within the
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© ENGLISH H ER I TAG E 43 - 20 09
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IntroductionThe provision of school
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The augmentation of state nursery p
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central schools, either newly built
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Fig 8: Model of Impington, possibly
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single-storey brick buildings, redu
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33 Board of Education 1931a, 58.34
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IntroductionFrom 1870 until 1990, t
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Fig. 12: SBL datestone from the Wes
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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 and 42: module. 41 Stillman’s schools wer
Page 43 and 44: a spacious playground with retained
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: L B Wandsworth, by providing ‘roo
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 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