Skinners' Company School For Girls

A girls' school built in 1889 by EH Burnell for the Skinners' Company, with additional building added in the 1890s by W Campbell-Jones following Burnell's death in 1892.

Materials and Style

Constructed in red brick with white brick and stone dressings, some areas rendered and painted, under slate roofs. The building is designed in the Queen Anne manner.

Plan

The school comprises a symmetrical front block of two storeys plus attics and basement, centred on a three-stage tower. This leads to a central hall running east-west, with two storeys of classrooms extending to north and south. A gymnasium dated 1893 is attached to the south-west angle of the building. Later 20th-century additions to the northwest corner are not of special interest.

Exterior

The entrance front presents a symmetrical composition of 11 bays, arranged 3:2:1:2:3, with the outer bays and centre breaking forward. The centre is dominated by a three-stage tower surmounted by a cupola. The lower stage is enriched with fluted pilasters at the angles and features a doorcase under a swan neck pediment containing the Skinners' Company arms. The doorcase has a round-arched opening over a fanlight, an enriched keystone, foliate frieze and spandrels, and a pair of eight-panelled doors. The first floor contains an eight-light mullion and transom window under a swagged frieze and between Ionic pilasters. The upper stage is similar, with a smaller two-light window in an enriched architrave on each face, and is surmounted by a balustrade. An octagonal open-sided cupola on a slate-hung base has a tall finial.

The flanking bays have tall 6-over-6 pane horned sashes in plain brick openings, on the ground floor with a rendered keystone, on the first floor under a shaped gauged brick arch. A white brick storey band continues to the side elevations. The outer bays have mansard roofs with a pair of pedimented dormers containing 6-over-6 pane sashes under a curved head. The inner bays each have a similar dormer with a single sash under a segmental pediment. Tall brick multiple stacks with raised brick bands sit between the main bays and at the back of the front range. An attached pierced parapet surrounds the semi-basement, on which are foundation stones dated June 1889.

The return elevations each have four sash windows to each floor. The left return has a pair of pedimented dormers; the right return has a flat-roofed dormer. There are small pedimented dormers on the rear roof.

The north two-storey block of classrooms has art rooms on the upper floor which were top-lit. Upper floor windows of 8-over-8 fixed lights and casements are set directly under the eaves to form a continuous window with the roof lights. Brick bands and mouldings continue from the front elevation. The south block of classrooms was probably rebuilt in the early 20th century and houses science rooms lit by large upper floor Palladian windows in stone architraves. The hall, set between the blocks of classrooms, has a small bell cote on the roof.

The gymnasium attached to the south-west angle has west elevation walls marked by buttress piers and white brick dressings where visible. A large clerestorey window is surmounted by a pediment with a pargetted panel and cartouche dated 1893. The south roadside elevation appears to have been rebuilt, extending the building southwards, and has a 20th-century metal-framed window. Similar buttress piers in red brick mark the north-west angle of the school building, possibly also extended later in the 19th century.

Interior

The hall is of eight bays under a boarded barrel roof supported on slender moulded ribs springing from piers. The eastern bay contains a gallery with a robust turned timber balustrade which runs across the building. At ground floor, set back under the gallery, square piers frame the entrance to the hall. These are flanked by circular stairwell windows overlooking the hall and lobby. At upper level, a pair of columns in antis with rich foliate capitals supports a foliate frieze which continues between the piers on the side walls and west wall. To each side is a robust ovolo-moulded mullion and transom stairwell window. A tall four-light window on each side, flanking the gallery, is now bisected by the extended gallery. At storey height on the side and west walls is a swagged frieze. Pairs of ground floor doors in moulded architraves lead to classrooms and offices. Upper floor clerestorey windows are partly infilled, leaving glazed upper sections. The west end has a large round-headed window with 20th-century commemorative coloured glass, flanked by mullion and transom windows. Below are a pair of double doors.

To each side of the hall entrance is a tightly fitted spiral staircase rising the height of the building. Each has an iron frame and masonry steps, a metal balustrade of alternate straight and wavy balusters and bulbous cast newels, and a moulded timber rail, and is lit by windows in composite stone surrounds which overlook the hall and lobbies.

Upper floor and north-east ground floor rooms have simple composite stone fireplaces. The gymnasium has an arch-braced roof, the upper part boarded in. The trusses spring from moulded rubbed brick piers with a dado between. At the north end is a gallery with a cast iron balustrade.

Setting

A brick wall with an open arcade and brick piers with stone or composite dressings encloses the site on the Stamford Hill and Northfield Road elevations.

History

The school opened in 1889 as the fourth school to be set up or maintained by the Skinners' Company. It was designed by EH Burnell (1819-1892), who was also responsible for buildings at The Tonbridge School, Tonbridge (1863-4 to 1880s), which was founded in the 16th century, and at Skinners' School, Tunbridge Wells (1886-7). The third school, The Judd School, Tonbridge, was established in 1888 and moved site in 1896, but it is not known if the first building was by Burnell. After Burnell's death in 1892, W Campbell-Jones was employed by the Skinners' Company and was probably responsible for the later 1890s work at the rear of Skinners' Girls' School.

The Skinners' Company intended to establish a girls' school that was fee-paying and aimed at middle-class families, as the district changed from one of large houses into streets of moderate-sized houses. By 1902 the school had 350 pupils. It became a direct grant school after the Second World War.

The school was set up in a climate of expanding provision of education for girls. The Girls' Public Day School Trust (GPDST) was founded in 1872, first setting up a small school in Chelsea. By 1895 it had opened 20 more schools in London and in cities across the country. Canon Francis Holland founded a school for girls in Baker Street, London in 1878, followed by a second school at Graham Terrace Belgravia which opened in 1881. In 1915 the Baker Street school moved to its present site at Clarence Gate near Regents Park, into buildings designed by HT Hare, which are listed Grade II. St Paul's Girls' School, Hammersmith, which opened in 1904, is housed in buildings of 1903 by Gerald Horsley (Grade II). The Livery Companies were keenly interested in extending education to a wider population. Haberdashers' Aske's Hoxton School for Girls opened in 1875, and in 1898 Haberdashers' Company opened a new girls' school in Acton for fifty-nine pupils. Coborn School for Girls, Tower Hamlets, built in 1897 and Grade II, resulted from the amalgamation by the Charity Commissioners in 1891 of the Coopers' Company schools and Coborn foundation schools in Bow. The expansion of sponsored schools runs in parallel to the growth in numbers of Board Schools which followed the 1870 Education Act and took off in the 1880s.

A certificate of merit dated 1918, but probably designed earlier, illustrates the school before the rebuilding of the south block of classrooms and with a single-storey building on the site of the gymnasium. An early photograph of the school hall shows the original smaller curved balcony above the entrance, full clerestorey windows, and doorcases with swan neck pediments. The portrait of Mary Hannah Page, first headmistress, is visible, hanging in the same position as today.

Later 20th-century additions to the school are not of special interest and are not included in the listing.