Assembly Hall At Bootham School

YORK

SE5952SE BOOTHAM 1112/13/10043 Bootham 31-MAR-07 (North,off) Assembly Hall at Bootham School

GV II School hall and place of worship. 1965-6 by Trevor Dannatt. Reinforced concrete construction exposed externally with board markings, on two sides projecting over glazed ground floor. Roof supported on four steel shutters, expressed externally with copper cladding and incorporating clerestorey glazing. The form of stairs to the gallery expressed externally in concrete. Narrow metal glazing bars to full height windows, with dado-height transom, and to blonde timber glazed doors. Single strip of windows recessed into rear wall serves dressing room area.

Foyer and crush hall on the two glazed sides, with board-marked concrete walls and ceilings; varnished paviour floor. Main hall for 340 on a ground floor which can be in flat or in two steps, with original fixed gallery bench seating on two sides for 140 more, a stage with a flexible facility for a forestage or orchestra pit, and dressing rooms. The gallery has a front parapet wall which continues to the ground on two sides to form the walls of the hall, this is clad in elm boarding. The stage is separated from the hall by a screen wall also of elm, which can be raised as required. Plaster ceiling to outer part of hall: the centre is a raised clerestorey whose windows admit a diffused light from above the trusses, and which neatly contains the theatre spotlights.

Bootham School is a Society of Friends School, originally for boys. Yorkshire Region RIBA Architecture Medal for 1967. The hall had to be capable of adaptation from a meeting hall for worship to a concert hall and theatre, 'from serenity to festivity' (Architectural Design). The building forms a centrepiece to the school complex without blocking views of York Minster from the main building. The building was thus conceived as a freestanding sculpture in a courtyard.

Sources Architectural Design, March 1967, pp.132-4 Concrete Quarterly, January-March 1967, pp.13-15 Trevor Dannatt, Buildings and Interiors, 1951-72