Franciscan Primary School Including Play Sheds, School Keeper's House (No. 221) and Stores, Wandsworth, London

Description

1207/0/10135 FRANCISCAN ROAD
16-JUN-10 Franciscan Primary School including pl
ay sheds, school keeper's house (no. 2
21) and stores

II
Former elementary school, now primary school. Dated 1908, built 1907-8 to designs dated 1905 by London County Council Architects' Department (Education) under TJ Bailey. Infants' block altered 1938-9. Small additions c2001 and later.

MATERIALS: Stock brick in English bond, some red brick in both English and Flemish bond; red brick, terracotta, stone and reconstituted stone dressings. Tile and slate roofs.

PLAN: Three separate blocks, now linked by low passages. Infants' block facing Franciscan Road, identical girls' and boys' blocks to rear. Perimeter covered play sheds and lavatories. School keeper's house.

INFANTS' BLOCK: Near symmetrical roadside elevation, altered in 1938-9. Additions to north-west angle are not of interest. Two-storey, four-bay central block, with single-storey gabled side wings. Hall to rear. Swept hipped tile roofs with egg-and-dart terracotta cornices, except hall which is slate, with a dentil cornice. Tall stacks frame central block. Small-paned, timber, horned sashes and casements, some top hung. Entrance, inscribed INFANTS, in stone doorcase, pair of part-glazed doors with vertical lower moulded panels; boot scraper to left. Gabled wings each with oculus. That to left depressed, with long stone voussoirs, that to right in simple flush red brick opening, both with shaped glazing bars. At rear of building the oculi are reversed, the simpler version to left wing. Rear and side elevations have raised red brick quoins, terracotta egg-and-dart cornices, flush red brick window dressings in Flemish bond. Tall, small-paned horned sashes either single or in pairs. Square, timber, louvred ventilating turrets with domed caps.

Interior: Top-lit, 5-bay hall, the trussed roof with longitudinal braces; glazing replaced. Internal stair from hall with square newels and stick balusters. Single-storey classrooms leading from hall, with small-paned glazed partitions and part-glazed doors. Brown glazed tile hall dado. Green glazed tile mantelpiece with eared surround to nursery.

GIRLS' & BOYS' BLOCKS: Formerly identical, now with ground floor additions and linked by covered passages, which are not of interest. Each has symmetrical northern elevation. Canted two-storey outer bays, entrances set back between centre of six bays, each section under hipped tile roofs. Entrances, inscribed 'BOYS' or 'GIRLS', each in round arched stone architrave with extended voussoirs. Above, panel inscribed LCC, or dated 1908, one removed and in store. Boot scrapers. Tall, small-paned, horned sashes or fixed lights, arranged in pairs or singly. Raised red brick quoins, flush red brick window dressings. Terracotta egg-and-dart cornices to principal elevations. Rear section of each building has deep flush red brick base in English bond, beneath reconstituted stone cill band. Square, timber, louvred ventilating turrets with domed caps, some gable finials; slender stacks, one to each block formerly housing a bell.

Interior: Each with six bay toplit hall detailed as infant block, with single-storey classrooms arranged round it. Small-paned, part-glazed partitions and doors. Stairs to upper rooms, formerly staff rooms, have square newels and stick balusters. North-west room of girls' block retains mantelpiece with iron grate, other upper floor rooms retain mantelpieces only. Halls have brown glazed tile dados. The hall walls are russet glazed brick to dado level and the floors are parquet. In the former boys' block there is an honours board at the bottom of the stair, listing boys who had won places in further education institutions between 1909 and 1917.

SUBSIDIARY FEATURES: Three, three-bay covered play sheds set against perimeter wall, two to west, one to east. Stock brick with red brick dressings, with hipped slate and tile roofs, supported on iron shafts. Flanked by former lavatories, now stores, of similar fabric. School keeper's house, 1907-8. Red brick ground floor and dressings, rendered upper floor, splayed, hipped slate roof. Two-storeys, three bays. Enclosed three-bay porch of red brick with splayed lead roof, small-paned fixed lights, entrance through part-glazed door to north. Flanking single- and two-light, small-paned windows, replaced with uPVC. Oculus in red brick surround above. Three upper floor windows breaking through eaves as dormers, with segmental heads and with small-paned casements. Red brick stacks. The interior has been refurbished and lacks special interest.

HISTORY: The school was built to serve the Totterdown Fields Estate, a pioneering cottage estate, built by the London County Council between 1903 and 1911. In 1938 the infant block was adapted for disabled children. Until the 1970s each section functioned as separate boys' and girls' schools under individual heads, but Franciscan School is now a single primary school. In the mid-2000s the school was extended by the construction of corridors linking the three blocks.

The 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. The Board remained in control of school-building in inner London until its powers were ceded to the London County Council in 1903. 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 tall, triple-decker board schools were beginning to fall out of favour by the middle of the first decade of the C20, as educationalists began to consider how school buildings could be designed to improve children's health. The first major conference on school hygiene was held in 1904, and in 1907 the Board of Education legislated that schools become subject to regular medical inspections. Space, light and air were prized above all, and schools were increasingly built low-rise, with suntrap plans, single banks of classrooms, open verandas and large windows. The county architect for Derbyshire, GH Widdows, was in the vanguard of these new ideas and his school buildings were particularly influential. Franciscan School represents the response of the London County Council, and its architect TJ Bailey, to these developments in school architecture.

REASONS FOR DESIGNATION: Franciscan School is listed at Grade II for the following principal reasons:
* Architectural Interest: TJ Bailey's grand style, typically deployed in large three-storey schools, is no less striking when concentrated in these modest single-storey blocks
* Historic Interest: an early and unusual instance of a London school planned as three separate blocks, heralding later changes in school-building practice, and contrasting with the vast triple-decker school on the same road
* Intactness: a notably well-preserved interior.

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