Queens Manor School with Associated School Keeper's House, Boundary Wall, Entrance Arches, Outdoor Wcs and Play Sheds, Palace Riverside, London

Description

333/0/10116
11-DEC-09

FULHAM
LYSIA STREET
Queens Manor School with associated school keeper's house, boundary wall, entrance arches, outdoor WCs and play sheds

Board school, 1903-4 by T J Bailey for the School Board for London. Later additions which lack special interest.

MATERIALS: Red brick and buff terracotta; red tile roof; white-painted timber windows, mainly sashes.

PLAN: The school is of three storeys; each has a large west-facing central hall with classrooms and twin staircases to the east, and corridors running north and south connecting to further classrooms and staircases. These outer staircases connect to small mezzanine floors overlooking the ground- and first-floor corridors, whilst the hall staircases lead up to the former art room in the attic above the hall block. Beneath the central block is a boiler room and coal cellar.

EXTERIOR: The east front to Woodlawn Road has a projecting gabled centrepiece, with twin entrances at ground level and four tiers of staircase windows above, recessed within two tall arches; above these is a steep pediment gable containing a row of small windows sunk behind a miniature Tuscan colonnade. The end bays also project very slightly and have pediment gables; that to the left has a round window with scrollwork ornament, and below it a large plaque bearing the school's foundation date. The windows of the linking classroom blocks become progressively more ornamental, with flat brick arches on the ground floor, terracotta aprons and keystones on the first floor and moulded architraves on the top floor beneath a continuous frieze and dentil cornice. The short north and south elevations are similarly treated. The west elevation has a projecting central hall block of five bays, with shaped gables and a mansard roof, flanked by lower stair towers topped with Diocletian windows and balustrades. The end bays are similar to those on the east front; the sections linking these to the central block have five tiers of small windows lighting the mezzanine floors. There are six original entrances, two each inscribed 'BOYS', 'GIRLS' and 'INFANTS' in the lintels.

To the west of the school is a mid-C20 classroom block of timber construction, linked to the main school via a brick corridor. There is a small brick extension to the kitchen at the north-west corner of the building, and a timber porch over the recently-created nursery entrance at the south-east corner. These later additions are not of special interest.

INTERIOR: These are of standard Board School type, enlivened by the moulded round-arched fireplaces at either end of the three halls, and the smaller fireplaces and panelled cupboards that survive in many of the classrooms. Two of the mezzanine-level offices contain fireplaces with slightly more ornamental timber surrounds, and there is a much larger fireplace with a green tiled surround in the entrance hall. The third-floor classrooms have exposed timber roof trusses, as does the art room in the attic space. The outer staircases are lined with brown glazed brick, and have metal balustrades to their upper flights. Internal windows and glazed screens separate the various rooms, most of which retain hardwood block floors and tiled dados, the latter now painted over.

SUBSIDIARY FEATURES: Stock-brick BOUNDARY WALL with red-brick piers each bearing an ornamental terracotta ball; two pairs of boys' and girls' ENTRANCE ARCHES to north and south, of banded red brick and terracotta, with wrought-iron gates and railings; outdoor WCs and open-sided PLAY SHEDS built against boundary wall; two-storey SCHOOL KEEPER'S HOUSE at north-east corner of site, of red brick and terracotta, with triangular gables and shaped dormer.

HISTORY: 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: Queen's Manor School is listed at Grade II for the following principal reasons:
* It is an especially imposing and well-preserved example of a London Board School, built at the end of the School Board period and exemplifying TJ Bailey's move towards more dramatic, Baroque-influenced forms;
* It retains an unusually complete ensemble of ancillary structures including an ornamental boundary wall, entrance gateways, playground sheds, toilet blocks and school keeper's house.

Reasons for Listing

Queen's Manor School is designated at Grade II for the following principal reasons:
* It is an exceptionally imposing and well-preserved example of a London Board School, built at the end of the School Board period and exemplifying TJ Bailey's move towards more dramatic, Baroque-influenced forms;
* It retains an unusually complete ensemble of ancillary structures including an ornamental boundary wall, entrance gateways, playground sheds, toilet blocks and school keeper's house.

External Links

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