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788/0/10269 ENGLISH STREET 11-DEC-09 Professional
Development Centre (forme rly South Grove School), with associat ed
handicraft/woodwork block, boundary wall and iron gates
GV II Two former board schools, one of 1874 by ER
Robson, architect to the School Board for London with additions of 1904 (western
school); and its replacement of 1904 by TJ Bailey (eastern school). Minor later
alterations.
WESTERN SCHOOL: The 1874 building is constructed of stock brick with red brick
dressings, pitched roofs of slate curbed by parapets, tall brick chimneys and
white-painted wooden windows. The building was originally of two storeys in
part, but floors have been removed inside; the external elevations nonetheless
still read as a mixture of single and two storey components. The style is
transitory: a residual Gothic with hints of Queen Anne, unsurprising given the
period was the one in which London School Board architecture was crystallising
into a recognisable house style, with Robson as board architect. The westernmost
portion of the building has a two storey south front towards Ropery Street, the
returns east and west with handsome exposed chimneybreasts at either end
bisecting the gable ends. The single storey hall range runs back from this front
block. A second range to the east runs parallel, this single storey with a small
timber cupola and three windows in the end gable (this front section of the
range is the later addition). A shorter block, set back from the street
frontage, links the two long ranges; this has two storeys with a later opening
at ground floor level to the front (this part is an addition of 1904), and a
single storey behind. A further addition of 1904 is the single storey entrance
lobby with two separate doors, presumably for girls and boys, to the west of the
main block. On the wall near here, set at the base of western chimneybreast, is
a remarkable stone relief plaque of Knowledge Vanquishing Ignorance; this is
original to the first phase in the building's history.
INTERIOR: The
building has been stripped back to its brick shell and the floors removed and so
few internal features, for example parquet floors or staircases, survive. There
are surviving elements of interest, however, which include: a small number of
panelled timber doors; a glazed brick lobby; the exposed timber roof trusses in
the hall (a king post) and the eastern two classrooms (with scissor trusses);
and a single fireplace. The plan is also of interest for its contrast with the
later forms adopted in board schools. Rather than have a central hall, this
building is much more traditional in layout, similar to the 'monitor system'
schools of the earlier part of the C19, where a single teacher supervised
assistants in each classroom.
EASTERN SCHOOL: The neighbouring 1904 board school is a three-storey, stock brick
building with red brick dressings and terracotta ornaments and copings. The
roofs are tiled and there is an octagonal cupola of timber and copper at the
centre. The windows are timber, painted white. The south (Ropery Street) front
has a tall centre comprising three storeys of halls with large windows, these
separated by piers with scrolled brackets above the first storey, rising to an
ornamental broken parapet over the top storey, curbing the high hipped roof. To
either side are the slender stair towers, with high shaped gables. These are
flanked by slightly lower links and there is a gabled wing to the east; its
counterpart to the west was never built. The north front has windows in
triplets, terracotta banding along the top storey and gables. Its projecting
eastern wing has a straight gable and terracotta cartouche inscribed 'South
Grove School AD 1904'. The single stair tower here has a copper ogee domed roof.
The east end (towards Southern Grove) has one straight gable in the centre; the
west end is plainer, level with a parapet, presumably because it was intended to
link to the second, un-built wing. There are separate entrances for Boys, Girls,
and Infants, all with inscribed lettering in the lintels and original steps and
iron railings. The inscribed lintel in the western elevation entrance has been
covered.
INTERIOR: The
standard plan comprising a central hall, with a single bank of classrooms down
one side, and corridors leading to clusters of classrooms in the wings, is
readable on each of the three-storeys. There has been some subdivision or
opening up two of the halls and some of the classrooms. There are mezzanines
between the floors overlooking the corridors; these were the former staff and
head-teacher's rooms. In the attic the former drawing or science classrooms
retain their timber roof trusses. There are hardwood block floors, glazed brick
dados (mostly painted), and semi-circular glazed fanlights and internal windows
in most corridors and classrooms; the upper floor corridors have skylights.
There are four stairwells, each with russet glazed brick walls, metal
balustrades to the upper flights and hardwood handrails lower down; the glazed
brick in all but the upper sections of one of the stairs has been painted. There
is a single fireplace surviving in one of the former
staffrooms.
SUBSIDIARY FEATURES: A third block, probably originally a HANDICRAFT OR WOODWORK BLOCK
with open arcades at ground floor (now infilled) and workshops above, is to the
north of the 1904 school and is likely to be contemporary with it. It has shaped
gable ends with stone kneelers and ball finials and a king post timber roof
inside. There is a high brick WALL around the southern and eastern sides of
site, with piers at regular intervals and the original wrought IRON
GATES.
HISTORY:
Unusually, the first school was not demolished when the second was completed,
but served as a special school after 1904 instead. The buildings were known as
South Grove School, after the street that runs alongside the eastern boundary
(now called Southern Grove). This is remembered in the plaque affixed to the
school reading 'South Grove School 1904'.
The pioneering Elementary Education Act of 1870, steered
through Parliament by William Forster and thus known as 'Forster's Act', was the
first to establish a national, secular, non-charitable provision for the
education of children aged 5-13. A driving force behind the new legislation was
the need for a literate and numerate workforce to ensure that Britain remained
at the forefront of manufacture and commerce. Moreover, the extension of the
franchise to the urban working classes in the 1867 Reform Act also alerted
politicians to the need to, in words attributed to the then Chancellor, 'educate
our masters'. The Act required partially state-funded elementary schools to be
established in areas where existing provision was inadequate, to be managed by
elected school boards. The School Board of London was the first to be founded
(in 1870), and the most influential. The Board was one of the first truly
democratic elected bodies in Britain, with both women and members of the working
classes on the board. It comprised 49 members under the chairmanship of the
former Viceroy of India, Lord Lawrence, and included five members of parliament,
eleven clergymen, the scientist Thomas Huxley, suffragists Emily Davies (an
educationalist) and Elizabeth Garrett Anderson (a doctor), and a working-class
cabinetmaker, Benjamin Lucraft. The Board's politics were ambitious and
progressive, as epitomised by its passing of a by-law in 1871 compelling parents
to send children to school; this was not compulsory nationally until
1880.
Such was the achievement of the London School Board in
the last quarter of the C19, that by the Edwardian period few neighbourhoods in
London were without a red brick, Queen Anne style, three-storey school designed
by ER Robson, the Board's architect, or his successor TJ Bailey. The Board's
adoption of the newly-fashionable Queen Anne style was a significant departure
from the Gothic Revival deemed appropriate to educational buildings up until
that point, and created a distinctive and highly influential board school
aesthetic. Around 500 board schools were built in London, many in
densely-populated, poor areas where they were (and often remain) the most
striking buildings in their locales. The Board did not escape criticism,
however, both on the grounds of expense to rate-payers and for potentially
radicalising the urban poor through secular education. Yet its supporters were
unapologetic, as the words of Charles Booth, justifying the expense of more
elaborate schools in the East End, indicate: 'It was necessary to strike the eye
and hold the imagination. It was worth much to carry high the flag of education,
and this is what has been done. Each school stands up from its playground like a
church in God's acre, ringing its bell'. Sherlock Holmes in Sir Arthur Conan
Doyle's 'The Naval Treaty' (1894) also lauded the new metropolitan landmarks as
'Beacons of the future! Capsules with hundreds of bright little seeds in each,
out of which will spring the wiser, better England of the future', thus
epitomising the reformers' confidence in the power of universal education to
transform society. The unpopularity of the board with ratepayers, however, led
to its abolition in 1902 and responsibility for educating London's children fell
to the London County Council. At first, they kept on TJ Bailey as architect and
so schools continued to be built in the board school idiom. The striking design
of many Board and LCC schools is thus illustrative of this special
history.
SOURCES: SAVE
Britain's Heritage, Beacons of Learning (1995) Elain Harwood and Andrew Saint
'Report on Listing of London Board Schools' held at NMR (1991) Timothy Walder,
'The evolution of the classic school design of the School Board for London
(1870-1904): a reassessment of the role of Edward Robert Robson' (Institute of
Education, University of London MA dissertation, 2006) James Hall, 'The London
Board Schools 1870-1904: Securing a Future for these Beacons of the Past'
(University of Bath MSc. dissertation 2006-7)
REASONS FOR DESIGNATION: Both the eastern and western parts of the Professional
Development Centre, formerly South Grove School, are listed at Grade II for the
following principal reasons:
- one block is a fairly rare, early (1874) school
by ER Robson, built in the period when no two London schools were the same,
and as the Queen Anne style was emerging as the board's signature idiom;
- the chimney bears a handsome plaque depicting
Knowledge Vanquishing Ignorance;
- the eastern school building (1904) is a fulsome
expression of TJ Bailey's later style, and epitomises the 'sweetness and
light' character of board schools architecture;
- the two former schools form a unique group, telling
the history of London board school architecture at a
glance."