Description

TL 3211 NE HERTFORD MORGAN'S ROAD

817-1/22/20000 Morgan's Junior School

II*

School, originally for infants and juniors, now used only by juniors. 1948-9 by the Hertfordshire County Council Architect's Department, job architect Bruce Martin. Landscaping by Brenda Colvin. Prefabricated cold-rolled steel system perfected with Ernest Hinchcliffe of Hills and Co., West Bromwich on 8'3" grid, clad with glass, and steel and concrete panels. Flat concrete and felt roofs. Informal plan set around higher assembly hall, and slightly lower space shared by entrance hall and (partially screened) dining hall. All classrooms face south. Former infants wing with smaller classrooms incorporating projecting areas for sinks and paints, each with teacher's store and giving on to broad cloakroom and corridor area. Junior rooms in two sections, those for smaller children with clerestory glazing, found also in corridors. Corridors with low fixed cloakroom racks and dividers. Ceilings with exposed framing.

Morgan's Road school is a cohesively planned and well preserved example of the system of the Hertfordshire County Council system of prefabricated schools developed with Hills of West Bromwich in 1945-7. Herts CC pioneered prefabrication in schools building to meet a population explosion in the county, and to provide a more humane child-centred environment for teaching the very young. Morgan's Road is a good example from the most rewarding years of the programme in the late 1940s, when the system had been developed but before many of the young team had left for the Ministry of Education (as Johnson-Marshall did in 1948) or the London County Council. It is just a street away from the Architect's Department at County Hall, and as the closest of all the schemes to the office gained particular attention. The massing of the separate infants' and juniors' wings either side of the hall is particularly satisfying. A refinement at Morgan's Walk was to pull out part of the infants' classrooms into an independent bay, creating a separate space for play and enhancing the stepped profile of the building, which rises to the central entrance hall. Clerestories in the lower wings give further interest to the rooflines, and provide diffuse top lighting. The Building Research Station advised on the original colour schemes, which originally included red and blue external steelwork, primary colours for the classrooms, and more neutral browns and greys for the hall.

(Sources: Architects' Journal: 31 August 1950: 215-19 ; Davies RL and Weeks J: The Hertfordshire Achievement: Architectural Review: June 1952: 367-72 ; Ehrenkrantz ED and Kay JD: Flexibility through Prefabrication: Progressive Architecture: July 1957: 106-7 ; Saint A Towards a Social Architecture: London, Yale: 1987 ; Saint A: Not Methods, But a Method of Building: Hertfordshire CC: 1990)

Listing NGR: TL3255211668

External Links

• Historic England Listing
• Wikidata Q17553688

External links are from the relevant listing authority and, where applicable, Wikidata. Wikidata IDs may be related buildings as well as this specific building. If you want to add or update a link, you will need to do so by editing the Wikidata entry.

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