Assembly Hall At Bootham School

The Assembly Hall at Bootham School, built in 1965-6 by Trevor Dannatt, serves as both a school hall and a place of worship. It was constructed using reinforced concrete, with the concrete left exposed externally and bearing the marks of the board used in its formation. Sections of the building project over a glazed ground floor. The roof is supported by four steel supports, clad externally in copper, and incorporates clerestory glazing. The concrete staircases leading to the gallery are also expressed externally. Tall, narrow metal glazing bars divide the full-height windows, each with a transom bar, and frame the blonde timber glazed doors. A single row of recessed windows serves the dressing room area at the rear.

The foyer and crush hall, located on the glazed sides of the building, feature board-marked concrete walls and ceilings, along with a varnished paviour floor. The main hall, designed to accommodate 340 people, has a ground floor which can be level or stepped, with fixed gallery bench seating on two sides for an additional 140. It incorporates a stage with adaptable facilities for a forestage or orchestra pit, and includes dressing rooms. The gallery’s front parapet wall extends down to the ground floor on two sides, forming the hall’s walls and being clad in elm boarding. A screen wall, also of elm, separates the stage from the hall and can be raised or lowered as needed. The outer portion of the hall has a plastered ceiling, while the central area features a raised clerestory with windows that admit diffused light from above the trusses and house the theatre spotlights.

Bootham School is a Quaker school, originally for boys. The design brief required the hall to be adaptable for worship, concerts, and theatrical performances, moving "from serenity to festivity." The building is positioned as a central element within the school complex, designed not to obstruct views of York Minster from the main buildings. It was conceived as a freestanding sculpture within a courtyard.