Summerfield Community Centre And Job Preparation Unit

This building, originally Dudley Road School, is a college that formerly served as a school. It was designed by the Birmingham architectural practice of John Henry Chamberlain & William Martin for the Birmingham School Board and built in 1878. The building is constructed of red brick with terracotta and stone dressings and has a tiled roof.

The northern end of the building rises to two and three storeys, while the southern end is single storey, though windows set high in the wall create the impression of an additional floor. The layout reflects the building's original educational purpose: the southern section housed the infants' school, with classrooms clustered around three sides of a central hall. The northern section contained the boys' school at ground floor level and the girls' school at first floor level, again with classrooms grouped around a central hall at both levels. Architects' drawings show that all classrooms in the infants' school had banked seating at the rear.

Exterior

The east front, facing Winson Green Road, is taller at its northern end. To the right are two wide gables indicating the classrooms. Each gable has two three-light mullioned and transomed windows at ground floor level with cambered heads. Buttresses are set between the windows and die back at the level of the first floor window sills. The left gable has the boiler stack at its centre, rising to project above the gable apex. At first floor level, the right gable has three sash lights with flat lintels, above which is a timber-framed gable. The left gable has four windows with arched heads. To the right of these was the boys' entrance, now masked by later 20th-century additions, above which the roof of the former boys' cloakroom can be seen with its apsidal end facing north.

To the left of these gables is the tower, which is slightly recessed. It has clasping buttresses and a projecting base which dies back to two sunken bays divided by an attached, projecting pier. Ground and first floor windows are sashes. Above these are further openings connected to the ventilation system. These are now blocked but are shown on the architects' drawings as louvered. They include arched openings at second floor level, above which is a rose set in an ashlar surround, with a gabled lucarne to the spire. These features above second floor level are repeated on the other faces of the tower.

To the left again is the arched and recessed portal which formed the entrance for the girls and infants. South of this is the caretaker's house, with two timber-framed gables on a smaller, domestic scale, with three-light sash windows to each floor and a prominent chimney stack set between them. To the left of this, the infants' school has two large projecting classroom wings with three arched windows to each and square-headed windows to the gables. At right of these is a lower gabled wing and to left a 20th-century addition. Behind them all can be seen the roof of the hall with its apsidal southern end.

The south front has the apsidal classroom to the south of the hall at centre, with pairs of windows divided by pilaster buttresses which die back below eaves level. Above these are gabled dormers with timber-framed gablets. At either side of this, the sides of the classrooms attached to the flanks of the hall have gabled sashes with glazed, ogee heads.

The west side has two gabled classrooms at right, as seen on the east side, and a further apsidal end to the classroom at left of these. Recessed and at left of this are two blank gables added in the later 20th century. The large block to the north of this, which is the flank of the school for boys and girls, has additions at right and left which were built between the publication of the 1904 and 1918 editions of the Ordnance Survey maps. These are set to either side of two gabled bays with three lights to the first floor, as seen on the east front at right of the tower.

On the west side of the yard are five bays of a covered playground which, from the evidence of early Ordnance Survey maps, appears to have formerly run along most of the length of this side of the site. It is a lean-to structure with a brick wall to the rear and hollow iron columns to the front with moulded bases and capitals. The corrugated metal sheeting of the roof has been replaced in the 20th century. To the rear is a lavatory block with walls of vertical wooden boarding and ventilation grilles to the top.

Interior

The central hall or schoolroom in the infants' school has boarded panelling below the dado. There are four trusses with cast iron blades which form pointed arches and have decorative panels to their sides. At the south end is a glazed wooden screen which extends the full height of the room and divides the hall from the apsidal classroom at its southern end. To the sides are windows with pointed arches giving views to the classrooms, and there are further windows between adjoining classrooms. The two apsidal classrooms both have similar cast iron ribs to their roofs.

The boys' school at ground floor level of the northern block has a central hall running north-south. Two of the classrooms have evidence in the mounting dado line of banked seating. An open-well staircase with stone treads leads to the first floor where the girls' school also has a central hall with a boarded ceiling and heavy, cusped wooden trusses. The lateral classrooms also have boarding below the dado and their original flooring. Doors and door furniture throughout the building are largely original.

Historical Context

The Birmingham School Board was brought into being by the Elementary Education Act of 1870. The Act, which empowered school boards to create new schools and pay the fees of the poorest children, was largely the result of campaigning by the Birmingham-centred National Education League. By 1902, when the Education Act abolished school boards and passed the responsibility for education to local authorities, the Birmingham School Board had built fifty-two new schools, as well as the Board's offices. All but four of these schools were designed by the architectural practice Martin and Chamberlain — from 1900 Martin and Martin — appointed Architect to the Board in 1870.

John Henry Chamberlain (1831-83) and William Martin (1828-1900) formed the practice Martin and Chamberlain in 1864. Following Chamberlain's death, Martin was joined by his son, Frederick William Martin (1859-1917), and the practice continued under the same name until the death of William Martin when it was renamed Martin and Martin. The board schools operated as focal points within each district, serving as symbols of municipal pride and civic achievement. Martin and Chamberlain created a house style for their schools, which were characterised by their red-brick construction, tall ventilation towers, proliferation of gables, and decorative use of tiles and terracotta, sometimes displaying naturalistic forms. Chamberlain believed that beautiful and well-planned school architecture might offer children some compensation for drab, cramped homes, and in 1894 the Pall Mall Gazette commented that "In Birmingham you may generally recognise a Board School by its being the best building in the neighbourhood... with lofty towers which serve the utilitarian purpose of giving excellent ventilation, gabled windows, warm red bricks and stained glass, the best of the Birmingham Board Schools have quite an artistic finish."

Dudley Road School was designed by Martin and Chamberlain in 1878 for the Birmingham School Board and was intended to accommodate 1,220 children. The Ordnance Survey map for 1890 identifies the building as being for 'Boys, Girls and Infts' with two ranges, at north and south, joined by the narrower caretakers' house at the centre with a playground shelter to the west of the site. The 1904 survey map shows an addition to the north side of the southern block and the 1918 Ordnance Survey shows additions to the northern block, to its south-west corner and northern side, together with a detached block to the north of the playground. Further buildings were added to the site in the later 20th century, principally at the north end. The building ceased to be a school in the later 20th century and was firstly made into Handsworth Technical College and then converted to a community and job-training centre.

The building is designated at Grade II* for its architectural quality as a work by Martin and Chamberlain, one of the leading architectural practices in late-Victorian Birmingham, showing distinct quality to both exterior and interior. It forms one of twenty-seven surviving schools built by the Birmingham School Board, which together form one of the most important groups of board schools in the country. Despite some later additions, the school is remarkably intact with a high proportion of its original fittings. The survival of particular features, notably the air extraction tower and the covered playground, is rare.