Former Berner Street Combined Special School with Cookery and Laundry Centres, Whitechapel, London

Description

STEPNEY

788/0/10266 HENRIQUES STREET
07-JUL-09 Former Berner Street Combined Special
School with Cookery and Laundry centres

II
Special school with cookery and laundry, 1903. TJ Bailey, architect, for the School Board for London. Minor later alterations.

EXTERIOR: A two-storey brick building with a pitched slate roof along the front range to Henriques Street with louvred dormers, a flat roof to the rear. The latter serves as a rooftop playground and so brick piers and iron railings form a parapet here. The Henriques Street façade has red bricks and Portland stone dressings. There are four bays of regular fenestration: large segmental arched windows with marginal lights and stone keystones to the ground floor and paired rectangular sashes above offset by an entrance bay and a square tower to the right. The stone-faced entrance has a segmental head with a tall keystone bisecting the lintel, to either side of which the words 'Cookery' and 'Laundry' are inscribed. Above the porch are two stone panels bearing the date of construction '1903' and the monogram of London's School Board 'SBL'. The square tower has corner pilasters in bands of brick and stone terminating in triangular stone caps. Atop the tower is a timber and lead cupola with a very slender copper finial and weathervane. The returns and rear elevations are stock brick and more plainly detailed, with simple rubbed red brick arches to the windows.

The 1909 extension (built as manual training centre and additional classroom) runs back from the rear corner of the building and is a modest single-storey stock brick building with red brick window dressings pitched slate roofs. It is not included in the listing.

INTERIOR: There are a number of surviving original features, the most notable of which include: russet glazed brick stairwell with concrete stairs and metal balustrade; first-floor hall with glazed bricks to dado height, original joinery and parquet floors; classrooms with corner chimneystacks, mantelshelves and original joinery; rooftop playground including covered play area and WCs; children's bathing cubicle with glazed bricks on the ground floor.

SUBSIDIARY FEATURES: Running alongside Henriques Street are handsome boundary railings with vase finials and three separate gates, two with lintels inscribed 'BOYS' and one inscribed 'M.T.C.' (Manual Training Centre). Each of the three iron gates bear the SBL monogram, and are rare surviving features. The northernmost gate was originally the girls' entrance but the raised lettering was removed and incised lettering added when the school switched to accommodating older boys.

HISTORY: When the special school was built in 1903 there were two board schools near the site: on Fairclough Street a three-storey Edwardian school designed by TJ Bailey, which survives; on Berner Street was an older school of 1886 by ER Robson, which was extended to designs by Bailey in 1910, and has since been demolished. The special school was originally intended to serve children whose physical or mental health meant that their needs were not met by regular board schools. They were to be taught cookery, laundering, and other manual tasks alongside traditional subjects. In 1902, however, the School Board decided to continue educational provision for older boys aged 12-16 who required additional training. When the school opened in 1903, it served older boys, although it is likely girls from nearby schools used the first floor cookery and laundry classrooms and rooftop playground. The school is thus an early, and now quite rare, example of educational provision for older children whose circumstances meant they required additional care into their teens. In 1909 the facilities were extended, and a single-storey classroom and manual training centre built to the rear of the 1903 school; the main block may also have been altered at this date. Further alterations were carried out in 1939 when the ground floor was adapted to become a school treatment centre. Some internal windows were blocked up and new walls built; one external window has a replacement metal frame.

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, run by local 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. Its 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. The Board was also one of the first to provide special facilities for mentally and physically disadvantaged children, with special schools built from the mid-1890s onwards, and for elder boys with learning difficulties from 1902. The special school under consideration for listing here was one of the first schools nationally to serve the needs of the latter.

REASONS FOR DESIGNATION: The former cookery and laundry building on Henriques Street is listed at Grade II for the following principal reasons:
* façade with prominent cupola-topped corner tower and plentiful Portland stone dressings, particularly grand for a small scale education building in East London;
* the rear elevation with its rooftop playground, whilst more modest, is well-crafted and characterful;
* handsome inscribed lintels, datestone and monogrammed iron gates announcing the building's pioneering purpose of providing practical instruction for children unsuited to traditional learning;
* well-surviving interior with glazed brick stairwell and dado in hall, parquet floors, original joinery and a rare glazed brick cubicle for bathing children.

Reasons for Listing

The former cookery and laundry building on Henriques Street has been listed for the following principal reasons:
* façade with prominent cupola-topped corner tower and plentiful Portland stone dressings, particularly grand for a small scale education building in East London;
* the rear elevation with its rooftop playground, whilst more modest, is well-crafted and characterful;
* handsome inscribed lintels, datestone and monogrammed iron gates announcing the building's pioneering purpose of providing practical instruction for children unsuited to traditional learning;
* well-surviving interior with glazed brick stairwell and dado in hall, parquet floors, original joinery and a rare glazed brick cubicle for bathing children.

External Links

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