Essendine School and associated school keeper's house, special school, handicraft block and boundary wall and gates, Maida Vale, London

Description

1900/0/10450

ESSENDINE ROAD
Essendine School and associated school keeper's house, special school, handicraft block and boundary wall and gates

11-DEC-09

II
Board school, designed by T.J Bailey for the School Board for London, 1899-1900, completed under the London County Council in 1904.

EXTERIOR: symmetrical composition, rectangular in plan, in a lavishly decorated Baroque Revival style. Of three storeys plus attic storey over the central hall block. Yellow stock brick with blue brick plinth, rusticated style red brick ground floor, and red brick, terracotta and stone dressings. Both tiled and slate roofs with brick chimneys. Original timber sash windows.

Long and complex symmetrical principal elevation (east), along Essendine Road, is of 28 windows length in all, with wings and lower, recessed linking blocks breaking up the frontage. The centre block, containing the halls, has four round-arched ground floor windows with emphasised voussoirs, then two storeys of windows articulated by Ionic brick pilasters with cream terracotta bands and garlanded capitals, and then a cornice to the raised fourth storey. This is topped by an ornamental parapet with a hipped tile roof and skylights and a small louvred cupola with domed metal roof and weathervane. Remainder of the fenestration generally of tall windows in threes, lower two floors flat-arched, upper floor round-arched; upper central window with banded surround. The rear (western) elevation is similar to the front but with a five rather than four bay central section and slightly simpler link blocks. The south end has four decorated terracotta plaques carrying the date 'AD 1900' and the north end the date 'AD 1904'. North and south elevations are similar, both with mostly blind walling and a projecting full height fenestrated entrance block with two entrance doors; one reached up a flight of external stairs, that to the south now lost to a flat-roofed, single-storey extension. Each of the long frontages also has two entrances, either side of the central blocks. All doors have stone surrounds with inscribed lintels for boys, girls and infants.

INTERIOR: standard later London School Board plan comprising a central hall, with a bank of classrooms down one side, and corridors leading to clusters of classrooms in the wings, is readable on each of the three storeys which were originally for infants (ground), girls (first) and boys (second). There are mezzanines between the floors overlooking the corridors; these were the former staff and head-teacher's rooms. In the attic of the hall block are former drawing classrooms which retain their timber roof trusses as does the second floor hall below. There are hardwood block floors, russet 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 six stairwells, each with cream glazed brick walls, metal balustrades to the upper flights and hardwood handrails lower down, and camber-headed arches to the corridors from the intermediate landings; the cream glazed brick continues into the corridors, some painted over. Wooden classroom partitions to corridor on the upper floor. Several classroom fireplaces survive, as do some of those in the former staffrooms with tiled 1930s surrounds. An original dumb-waiter is still in situ as are some of the gas-lights on the stairwells.

SUBSIDIARY FEATURES: SCHOOLKEEPER'S HOUSE to south of school building. Two storeys of yellow stock brick and red brick dressings with pitched slate roof with dormers projecting through the eaves on the principal elevation facing the school. Tall projecting entrance with four-pane light over door. Sash windows. SPECIAL SCHOOL, large two-storey block with hipped slate roof parallel to the west elevation of the school, later extended to the north and originally housing a special school with cookery/laundry above; of yellow stock brick with red brick dressings to regular square-headed fenestration on main elevation, broken by off-centre, round-arched, full height entrance arch. HANDICRAFT BLOCK to north of special school. A two-storey building with gabled slate roof and arched open-air playground space on the ground floor, glazed-in with uPVC in 2007 when the upper floor windows were replaced with the same material. The interiors of these three buildings were not inspected. BOUNDARY WALL of yellow stock brick with stone-capped red brick piers. Broken to reveal the frontage of the central hall block on Essendine Road; the gap is closed by iron railings. Three original gates, with inscribed stone lintels, survive onto Essendine Road, one of which is for the schoolkeeper's house.

HISTORY: Essendine School was originally called Essendine Road School, after the street that runs along its eastern boundary. It was designed for the School Board for London by TJ Bailey in 1899-1900 and extended to the north in 1904 under the London County Council. A large school, it had provision for a total of 1,556 pupils.

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 striking design of many of these schools is 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: Essendine School is designated at Grade II for the following principal reasons:
* It is a grand, symmetrical, London Board School of 1899-1904 designed by TJ Bailey in an unusual Baroque Revival style of which this is one of only two identified examples; indicative of the move away from the established Queen Anne style of London Board Schools towards a more Classical style;
* The principal elevations are skilfully designed to provide variety to the long frontages and are richly detailed with terracotta, stone and high quality brick dressings; the exterior is virtually unaltered from when it was built;
* It has a well surviving interior with cream glazed brick in the stairwells and corridors;
* The school, caretaker's house, special school, handicraft block and boundary walls form a characterful ensemble of late-Victorian and Edwardian educational buildings.

Reasons for Listing

Essendine School is designated at Grade II for the following principal reasons:
* It is a grand, symmetrical, London Board School of 1899-1904 designed by TJ Bailey in an unusual Baroque Revival style of which this is one of only two identified examples; indicative of the move away from the established Queen Anne style of London Board Schools towards a more Classical style;
* The principal elevations are skilfully designed to provide variety to the long frontages and are richly detailed with terracotta, stone and high quality brick dressings; the exterior is virtually unaltered from when it was built;
* It has a well surviving interior with cream glazed brick in the stairwells and corridors;
* The school, caretaker's house, special school, handicraft block and boundary walls form a characterful ensemble of late-Victorian and Edwardian educational buildings.

External Links

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