Ashlyns School Building Including The Chapel, Main Block And Classroom Wings

Ashlyns School Buildings including the Chapel, Main Block and Classroom Wings is a former Foundling School, now a Foundation School owned by Hertfordshire County Council. It was designed by John Mortimer Sheppard for the Foundling Hospital and built between 1932 and 1935, with minor late 20th-century alterations. The buildings are constructed of multi-coloured narrow bricks with Bath stone dressings and hipped tiled roofs behind parapets. The complex forms a symmetrical and linked group of school buildings aligned northeast to southwest in an austere Neo-Classical style, organised around a courtyard. At the centre of the front is the chapel, with flanking classroom ranges to the sides and rear, and the main block positioned centrally at the rear.

Chapel

The chapel features an advanced porch with shallow steps and four tall Doric columns supporting a large pediment filled with the school coat of arms, influenced by that of the Foundling Hospital. The coat of arms depicts two women flanking a plaque that incorporates a baby, a lamb and the word 'HELP'. Behind the porch is a stone face with pilasters, a central door and flanking windows. Brick walls continue to each side, forming the front range, which has a parapet with urns flanking the pediment and a tall hipped roof. At the centre stands a tall open tower comprising a plinth with a clock capped with urns and corner piers surmounted by an elongated copper dome. To each side of the tower is a single-storey double colonnade of four stone columns connecting to the classroom ranges and incorporating a drive-through to the courtyard. The main chapel range behind is plainer, with stone eaves, brick quoins and a lower apse to the rear. Windows have brick architraves and mostly rounded arch heads. Lower narrow ranges to the sides contain secondary doors within stone architraves. A foundation stone is set into the outside wall.

The interior has a stone-lined entrance with a memorial to Thomas Coram (1668-1751) in a niche, transferred from the original chapel. The wide nave of six bays terminates in an apse, with shallow aisles to each side. The interior is stone-lined with pilasters defining each bay, from which spring ribs for the barrel-vaulted ceiling. A wood-panelled gallery is supported on wood columns and contains reused 18th-century pews from the original chapel. Stained glass windows include several reused from the original chapel. A flying curved dogleg stair in the rear corner, with alternating stick and zigzag iron balusters and stone monuments on the walls, leads down to the crypt. An ashlar arcade with quoins leads to a central space that incorporates numerous 18th- and 19th-century memorials transferred from the 18th-century chapel, many referencing tombs in the St Georges, Bloomsbury churchyard that was near the original chapel. There is a bust of G.F. Handel. The apsidal end includes a reused ornate iron Communion Rail from the original chapel.

Classroom Ranges

Linked by a colonnade to each side of the chapel are two long ranges of two storeys and seventeen bays, with six-over-six pane sash windows, stone plinth, brick quoins, brick parapet and steep hipped roof with end chimneystacks. The central three bays are slightly advanced, forming an entrance with four stone pilasters, a central door within a stone architrave with urns, a parapet with a central plaque and flanking urns, and a pair of ridge chimneystacks. The return elevations facing the chapel have high circular windows over the colonnade. The return elevations to the outside have stepped stone architraves, a stone plaque on the left range, and sash windows. Projecting to the rear from the centre of these ranges are two long two-storey ranges forming the sides of the courtyard. These have a spine corridor to the rear where the ground floor windows are set under round brick arches. Facing the courtyard, the central three bays are slightly advanced with stone pilasters and a scrolled stone pediment over the central window with keyblock plaques including an infant motif. At both sides, a long single-storey double colonnade of stone columns links to the front of the main block. To the rear at each side is another classroom range parallel to that at the front and linking to the main block, enclosing the courtyard.

Main Block

The front range of the main block is of two storeys under a steep hipped roof with a central tall cupola similar to that on the chapel. It is five bays wide with a single window bay at each end. The three central bays are recessed behind a colonnade of stone columns, with a continuous stone cornice and frieze, brick parapet with tall end chimneystacks, and a stone balustrade with corner urns over the central three bays. The recessed entrance has a stone architrave with a broken segmental pediment within which are foliate swags and a figurative plaque; the architrave extends to include a sash window above. There are six-over-nine sashes to the ground floor and six-over-six sashes to the first floor. Flanking lower ranges with sash windows and a two-storey classroom range connect to the rear.

The interior has an entrance hall with Art Deco-style stepped wood architraves. Stairs to the right are reused from the Girls' Wing of the original Foundling Hospital and have heavy square-plan newels, wide moulded handrail and short vase balusters. The Board Room at first floor is believed to have a wooden fireplace surround. The Assembly Hall has dado wood panelling and a raised ceiling along the spine in a shallow elliptical arch, a gallery over the entrance and a stage at the opposite end with the school's coat of arms above. Stained glass incorporates reused windows from the original chapel. Behind this, the Dining Hall is of two identical sides with central folding wood partitions formerly separating girls from boys, dado panelling below paned windows, and a shallow tray ceiling with glazing. To the left, the Swimming Pool is intact with a raised segmental arch clerestory roof. To the right is the Gymnasium, with a raised lantern ceiling. The kitchen continues to the rear. Extending from the back of the rear classroom range are two long single-storey ranges of bicycle sheds with brick end and rear walls and a wooden column colonnade of ten bays.

History

In the early 18th century, Captain Thomas Coram campaigned to establish a charity that would care for the high numbers of abandoned babies in London. His work resulted in a 1739 Royal Charter that established the London Foundling Hospital for the 'Maintenance and Education of Exposed and Deserted Young Children'. Designs for the hospital were made without charge by Theodore Jacobsen in a restrained Georgian style as a three-sided courtyard. The institution served 400 children with emphasis on the teaching of crafts; girls were expected to go into domestic service, boys into apprenticeships. The institution flourished from the mid-18th century through the 19th century, caring for many abandoned foundlings, but by the early 20th century increasing amounts of pollution and changing ideals about the benefits of cleaner air in the country encouraged the Foundling Hospital to look for a new site. The building in Lamb's Conduit Fields was sold in 1925 and soon after Jacobsen's hospital was demolished; only the southern colonnaded range and the pedestal for Thomas Coram's statue survived. The interiors of the three principal rooms, which had been decorated to a much greater degree than the austere children's rooms, were reconstructed within the Grade II London Headquarters in Brunswick Square, and some materials were salvaged for use in the new school buildings.

The Ashlyns site in Berkhamsted was purchased in 1929, chosen for its proximity to London and the railway, the sufficient acreage and its good land. The architect John Mortimer Sheppard was selected to design the new school buildings. While also looking to contemporary school design, the school was intended to reflect the original hospital both in spirit and in detail. The original Arms designed by Hogarth were the model for the new arms, the main staircase from the Girls' Wing was re-erected, columns were to match an original from the old building, and busts of musicians were to be installed in the new band room. In addition, the original light pedestals were sited on the new drive and twenty boundary posts with a lamb motif, modelled on the originals, were stationed at the edges of the estate. The most extensive and extraordinary incorporation of material from the original hospital was in the new chapel. Here are the earliest original stained glass windows and some of the original seating including the 'Governor's pews'. The Crypt was built to hold the remains of Thomas Coram, the Communion Rail, numerous memorial tablets and the bust of Handel. Coram's remains were removed to St Andrew's Holborn after the school was sold to Hertfordshire County Council in the 1950s, but the rest of the historical artefacts survive.

Ashlyns School has special interest as a fine Neo-Georgian style school complex of 1932-35 by John Mortimer Sheppard, organised around a central courtyard with the chapel most prominent. It also has very special historic interest for its associations with the famous 1745 Foundling Hospital in London, now demolished, but which was partly incorporated into the new school building.