Description

LEWISHAM

779/0/10159 ELMIRA STREET
08-APR-09 Lewisham Bridge Primary School

II
Primary school, designed 1912 and built 1914, by the School Division of the London County Council's Architect's Department, at that time headed by architect J Rogers Stark. Minor later alterations including a single storey extension on south-eastern range which is not of special interest. The other buildings on the site also lack special interest and are not included in the listing.

EXTERIOR: Lewisham Bridge School is a stock brick building with mainly timber sash windows, hipped tiled roofs and brick chimney stacks, in an Arts and Crafts style. It is arranged in a butterfly plan, with principal elevations to the north-west and south-east. A two-storey range containing the school halls runs the depth of the building at its centre. It has three window bays and a steeply-pitched hipped roof with sprocketed eaves, and the middle window breaking through the eaves with a pediment. The hall range is flanked by two-storey wings of classrooms, accessed via corridors running along the north-west side of the building. On this elevation, the windows are segmental-headed on the ground floor, flat-headed on the first, and there is a clerestory above, set-back over the corridor, with oculi giving light directly to the classrooms. On the south-east front, the windows are segmental-headed on both storeys and there is no clerestory, as without the intervening corridor the classrooms receive direct light. The central hall range here has been marred by a single storey extension at ground floor level, added in the 1970s. The flanking wings terminate in square pavilions with hipped roofs and more tall windows breaking the eaves line. These house the original entrances - which have stone surrounds and timber doors, some with the original boot scrapes set into the wall - and the stairwells, as well as cloakrooms and further classrooms. Once bounded by a tall brick wall, which survives in part, the school would have originally only been visible above ground floor level. The enlargement of the playground to the north-east means that the buildings now command a wider aspect than originally.

INTERIOR: the plan survives well, with each floor having a central hall between two rows of classrooms off a spinal corridor; there has been minimal partitioning or removal of walls. The survival of original finishes and fittings is also very good. These include: tiles to dado level in corridors and the halls (green on the ground floor, blue on the first); parquet flooring; joinery in classrooms and corridors including doors and some cupboards; some sinks in classrooms; cloakrooms with numbered pegs and original sinks; stairwells with glazed brick walls and metal balustrade; radiators; glazing between the corridor and classrooms; and school bells.

HISTORY: The LCC minutes record that the Council sanctioned £16,377 for rebuilding in July 1912, so the designs must have been drawn up some two years before work began in 1914. The school was for girls and infants, with boys accommodated in the 1870s Board School further along Elmira Street (now demolished).

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 architect, or his successor TJ Bailey. When the Board was dismantled in 1902, responsibility for educating London's children passed to the London County Council, which continued to employ Bailey as architect. Hence, at first, schools continued to be built in a similar style and materials as under the School Board. The Council's school-building operation was reformed in about 1910, however, when Bailey retired and school design was transferred from the education department to the architect's department. Schools were thus brought more in line with contemporary LCCs housing, which favoured a more domestic, Arts and Crafts idiom. The architecture of Lewisham Bridge School in particular shows the influence of the LCC cottage estates, such as that at Old Oak Common, west London, which at that time formed the bulk of the architect's department's work. The design contrasts with the better-known London board schools, illustrating the transition from School Board to LCC.

The school's design also shows how wider educational reforms and new ideas about sanitation had percolated down to the Schools Division of the LCC. The first major conference on school hygiene had been held in 1904, and in 1907 the Board of Education legislated that schools become subject to regular medical inspections. The county architect for Derbyshire, GH Widdows petitioned the Board for a pioneering plan to be adopted in new schools: 'a structure which had one semi-detached hall of three departments, on each of which a line of classrooms joined by a corridor could be cross-ventilated by a wholesome supply of fresh air'. This 'pavilion plan' was approved by Felix Clay, Head of the Board in 1905. For once, London was not in the vanguard of school architecture, as it had been for much of the C19. Yet despite being designed four years after the Board's reforms in 1908, Lewisham Bridge School was still one of the first London schools with 'single-banking', where classrooms open off a corridor on one side only thus enabling cross-ventilation to the classrooms. The other was Burghley Girls' Central, Kentish Town (also 1914), which has since been demolished. Lewisham Bridge School is thus an early example of the LCC shaking up the compact, tightly-planned Board school model to admit more light to the hall and corridors, as Widdows had done in Derbyshire. Other features at Lewisham which responded to the new preoccupation with hygiene were: the tiled (and hence easily-cleaned) walls; ventilation grilles in every classroom; and a clerestory giving direct light to the corridor-side of the classrooms. The 'single banking' plan went on to be adopted at many other LCC-built schools, such as Brunswick Park, Southwark (1915, surviving) and Hillbrook Road, Lewisham (1916, surviving). None were as dynamic as Lewisham Bridge School, however, where the wings were skewed at 45 degrees in a butterfly plan, showing the influence of late C19 sanatoria on the one hand, and Arts and Crafts domesticity on the other. Again, the LCC architects were probably inspired by the work of GH Widdows, who had used a butterfly-plan at the Glebe Elementary School, Bolsover, Derbyshire (listed Grade II) in 1908.

SOURCES: Susan Beattie, 'A Revolution in London Housing: LCC Housing Architects and their Work 1893-1914' (1980)

REASONS FOR DESIGNATION: Lewisham Bridge School is listed at Grade II for the following principal reasons:
* special historic interest as one of the first LCC departures from the design of board schools to take into account the new ideas about cross-ventilation and light, then current in educational and healthcare reform;
* these principles are manifest in myriad elements of the school's architecture, including its butterfly plan, tiled surfaces, and well-lit and ventilated classrooms and halls;
* a particularly intact interior;
* special architectural quality of the principal elevations, with a symmetrical central range offset by the picturesque massing of the end blocks;
* high standard of craftmanship, materials and detailing throughout, a hallmark of LCC architecture in the Edwardian period.

Reasons for Listing

Lewisham Bridge School has been listed at Grade II for the following principal reasons:
* special historic interest as one of the first LCC departures from the design of board schools to take into account the new ideas about cross-ventilation and light, then current in educational and healthcare reform;
* these principles are manifest in myriad elements of the school's architecture, including its butterfly plan, tiled surfaces, and well-lit and ventilated classrooms and halls;
* a particularly intact interior;
* special architectural quality of the principal elevations, with a symmetrical central range offset by the picturesque massing of the end blocks;
* high standard of craftmanship, materials and detailing throughout, a hallmark of LCC architecture in the Edwardian period.

External Links

• Historic England Listing
• Wikidata Q27087216

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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