Hanover Primary School and Railings, Panelled Walls and Gatepiers to Front (North) Elevation, Islington, London

Description

635-1/0/10205
04-MAR-10

NOEL ROAD
Hanover Primary School and railings, panelled walls and gatepiers to front (north) elevation

Elementary school, now primary school. 1931-2 by the London County Council (LCC) Architects Department. Small early C21 extension to rear is not of special interest.

MATERIALS: Yellow stock brick with mixed red and blue brick and Portland stone dressings, tiled hipped roofs to roof-top playground shelters. Original wooden fenestration mostly replaced with uPVC copies in 2008 including French windows to the open-air classrooms.

PLAN: Linear plan with single-banked open-air classrooms to south of an axial corridor. These have been reduced from the original six classrooms on each floor to four by alterations to the original internal partitions. Slightly angled end pavilion blocks containing halls to the east and, originally, practical workshops to the west (additional infants class on the ground floor). Separately expressed staircase blocks on the principal façade between the classroom block and end pavilions. These blocks have an additional storey at the front of the building, rising above the large roof-top playground to provide its shelters and staircase access.

EXTERIOR: Of three-storeys with a roof-top playground, the school is built below the level of Noel Road on a terrace next to the Regent's Canal, with entrance to the building from the road at first-floor level. The principal (north) elevation to Noel Road is in a loose Arts and Crafts style with five-bays, each treated separately. The central bay is set back behind a portico formed of four tall square piers of mixed red and blue brick with an additional rectangular pier to the east, atop the boiler room and containing the boiler chimney which rises above the parapet with a corbelled projection. The fenestration behind the portico has interspersed large and small square-headed windows on the second floor (with decorative plaques with floral motifs below and the central window expressed as a shallow corbelled bay); regularly spaced segmental arched windows to the first floor and square-headed to the ground floor. Either side of the central bay are two entrance bays containing the principal entrances to the school and main staircases which are articulated externally with a Portland stone zig-zag step design between the second and attic (rooftop playground) floors. The entrances are all given different treatment with the boys' entrance in the western block having brick piers with a stone cornice, plaques below with floral designs and 'BOYS ENTRANCE' inscription, whilst the girls' entrance in the eastern block has a terracotta surround inscribed 'GIRLS' on the lintel with a simple stone hood, above which is a floral plaque below a square-headed window with a Portland stone surround. The windows of the western bay (to the workroom block) are segmental arched to the upper floors, in threes with a narrow central window, with two square-headed windows on the ground floor. The eastern (hall) block is divided into five-bays. The large windows of the three inner bays are set in shallow round brick arches, arched on the second floor and square-headed on the ground and first floors. The two outer bays are blind recesses but with decorative brick corbelling to the attic which has five small square windows.

The open-air classrooms are located to the rear of the building and face south to get maximum natural light, with metal balconies to the first and second floors and the ground floor opening onto the playground to the south of the school overlooking the canal. Originally there were six classrooms on each level (plus an extra ground floor classroom in place of a workshop); ground floor for infants, first for junior boys and second for junior girls. Each of the upper storey classrooms originally had three pairs of adjacent French windows, with a six-pane window either side, and four-pane, centrally-pivoted, windows above. The ground floor classrooms had a slightly narrower frontage and only two pairs of French windows divided by a standard six-pane window. These are all uPVC replacements which retain the style and arrangement of the originals, although with top-hinged upper windows. The remainder of the fenestration on the south elevation is of square-headed windows with dressings of alternating blue and red bricks. The east and west elevations are similar with regular fenestration, mostly square headed. The ground floor of the west elevation has French windows. The rooftop playground is virtually unaltered with its red-tiled stair buildings and shelters with wooden trusses supported on cast-iron columns.

To the rear of the hall block is a modern small, single-storey, flat-roofed, extension with a glazed entrance lobby. This is not of special interest.

INTERIOR: Original features of note include parquet floors to halls and corridors, blue, cream and orange dado tiling (overpainted in places), internal glazing and glazed doors to classrooms. The stairs retain their plain metal banisters with wooden handrails. On the stairs on the first floor are two wooden memorial boards (LCC Brave Deeds Boards) recording the names of pupils who had rescued people from drowning in the Regent's Canal.

SUBSIDIARY FEATURES: The original cast-iron railings, panelled brick boundary wall and gate piers to the front elevation remain (the section of boundary wall to the east of the eastern end of the railings is not of special interest), as do the original metal railings to the rooftop playground.

The eastern playground has high stock brick retaining walls to Noel Street and there is also a boundary wall on the canal side of the site supported on retaining walls above the towpath. These are not of special interest.

HISTORY: Originally named Hanover Street Board School (from the previous name of Noel Road) it was originally opened in 1877 with places for 828 boys, girls and infants, rising to 1,229 by 1893. It was a typical three-storey London Board school built on a restricted site south of Hanover Street at its junction with St Peter's Street, adjacent to the Regent's Canal and just east of City Road Lock. The present school was built in 1931-2 by the London County Council (LCC) slightly to the west of the Board school which was demolished due to subsidence resulting from its location next to the canal. The creation of the new school, designed by the LCC Architects Department, involved the demolition not only of the original school but twelve houses in the terrace to the west to give an enlarged site. Despite this extra space it was still a relatively restricted site and the new school followed the earlier Board school in being multi-storey (as was usually the case where the LCC replaced existing Board schools), despite the prevailing trend for single-storey primary schools where space allowed. Most of the original site of the school was used to create a large playground to the east of the new school which was, nonetheless, larger than the original school and allowed for lower-density classrooms.

The new school reflected current thinking regarding school design in its single-banked classrooms which opened out onto balconies overlooking the canal through French windows, allowing maximum ventilation and light. Fresh air and good lighting had been a major preoccupation with health practitioners, educationalists and, eventually, schools architects such as George Widdows in Derbyshire, George Reid in Staffordshire, RG Kirkby in Bradford and WH Webb in London, since the early 1900s. This movement of hygiene-led schools design reached its culmination in the separate-block planned, open-air special schools which began to be built in the years prior to World War I and reached their heyday in the 1920s. Hanover School is a successful attempt to merge the Board school 'triple-decker' approach to schools design with the, then current, health and hygiene driven approach of the open-air schools.

SOURCES: Cherry, Bridget and Pevsner, Nikolaus, Buildings of England: London 4 - North (1999) p673
Franklin, Geraint, Inner-London Schools 1918-44: A Thematic Study (2009)
LCC Schools Plans (1931)
Seaborne, Malcolm and Lowe, Roy, The English School: Its Architecture and Organisation - Vol. II 1870-1970 (1977)

REASONS FOR DESIGNATION: Hanover Primary School is listed at Grade II for the following principal reasons:
* Architectural interest: for its unusual design in a mixture of Arts and Crafts and stripped-classical styles;
* Historic interest: considered one of the best examples of the adaptation by the London County Council Architects Department of the Victorian Board school's 'Triple-decker' design to embrace the hygiene-led approach of the open-air schools of the period;
* Materials: for its high quality brickwork detailing;
* Interior: for good survival of original internal fabric, including evocative Brave Deeds boards associated with its canalside location and, overall, good retention of the original plan form;
* Setting: for its prominent position overlooking the Regent's Canal.

Reasons for Listing

Hanover Primary School, Noel Road, Islington, designed by the LCC Architects Department in 1932, is recommended for designation at Grade II for the following principal reasons:
* Architectural interest: for its unusual design in a mixture of Arts and Crafts and stripped-classical styles;
* Historic interest: considered one of the best examples of the adaptation by the London County Council Architects Department of the Victorian Board school's 'Triple-decker' design to embrace the hygiene-led approach of the open-air schools of the period;
* Materials: for its high quality brickwork detailing;
* Interior: for good survival of original internal fabric, including evocative Brave Deeds boards associated with its canalside location and, overall, good retention of the original plan form;
* Setting: for its prominent position overlooking the Regent's Canal.

External Links

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