Woodberry Down Community Jmi School

This primary school was designed by the London County Council's Architects Department and is now owned by the London Borough of Hackney. It was planned as part of the London School Plan of 1947, with the design published in January 1948. Construction began in January 1949 and the school opened in 1951.

Materials and Design

The building is constructed of yellow stock brick laid in stretcher bond with recessed joints. Corners have a quoined treatment and there are soldier courses over the window openings. Windows are square or rectangular with metal frames and shallow, slightly pronounced sills. The larger and more prominent windows—particularly those serving classrooms, halls and dining rooms—are surrounded with flat architraves and mullions faced with matte pale blue and yellow tiles. The roofs have a shallow pitch and are covered with red tiles. The eastern nursery ranges feature clerestory windows. The overall design aesthetic is spare and influenced by Scandinavian architecture.

Layout

The school exemplifies the characteristic plan form that emerged from the first programme of permanent school design after the Second World War. It follows a long finger plan with classrooms along the south side of a spinal corridor and cloakrooms on the north. Separate assembly halls for infants (at ground floor) and juniors (at first floor) project from the west end, where the staff rooms and main entrance from the road are also located. Separate dining areas occupy a similar two-storey range projecting north from the east end of the site. The site slopes considerably downwards to the north towards the New River, which means the ground floors become raised on the north side with exposed basements below. An early aerial photograph confirms that the school has not been extended since its original construction.

Exterior

The main approach from Woodberry Grove is framed by a low brick wall featuring a glazed plaque with a crest and red lettering reading 'L.C.C. Primary School Woodberry Down'. Entry to the site passes through a two-storey, flat-roofed range with first-floor classrooms above three wide open bays with tiled pilotis. Beyond this are the two main children's entrances: the right-hand one is recessed with tiled deep jambs featuring 'infants' in lower-case red cursive script, whilst the left-hand entrance for juniors is similarly detailed in green. Above these are the tall windows of the main stair hall, and to the right are the staff room windows, those at ground floor having matte tiled surrounds. Continuing northwards is the two-storey halls range with a tall tripartite window at ground floor surrounded by blue tiles, below a similar window with yellow tiles. Set on a stone platform is an abstract sandstone sculpture of a man with a boar, the provenance of which is unknown. A caretaker's house in similar style faces Woodberry Grove but has replacement windows and doors and is not of special interest.

From the north, the linear classroom range appears as two high-set storeys (accommodating the sloping site). The central twelve bays are advanced and feature a tall central entrance with a parade of windows at each storey beneath a shallow pitched roof. The hall and dining room ranges advance to east and west. The hall has a large tripartite window at each floor, dressed in yellow tiles at first floor and blue tiles at raised ground floor. The dining hall has a run of windows at raised ground floor level with yellow tiles. A low bike shed extends westwards from the dining range, and a similar single-storey original wing projects from the hall. The north end of the halls range rises to four storeys with two windows at each floor, whilst the dining rooms range has three windows over three storeys; both of these terminate in shallow pitched gables.

At the east end are the nursery ranges, which are lower in height and feature continuous shallow clerestory lights beneath shallow gables, giving the roofs the appearance of floating over the classroom ranges. The nursery classrooms have an external corridor on the south side with metal-framed walls that are part-panelled and part-glazed. This corridor links back to the dining rooms range, where the first floor has a nine-light run of windows with blue tiled mullions. The entrance at this end, leading into the spine corridor from the east, is fully faced with blue tiles at ground and first floor levels.

From the south, the two-storey range of six classrooms at each floor features a continuous run of ground-floor windows with pale yellow and pale blue tiled surrounds. Plain windows above are set immediately below the shallow pitched roof. The three entrances at the west end have shallow curved cantilevered canopies.

Interior

The playground entrance on the north side opens into a wide stair leading to the main classroom spine corridor, which is lit from north-side windows and also by skylights at first-floor level. The main staircase at the west end of the building features a wide open well with metal balusters. At the landing of the main staircase, set into the exposed brick wall, is a cement and plaster mural entitled 'Scraffito' by the artist Augustus Lunn. This mural was installed after being salvaged from the Festival of Britain's South Bank 'Seaside' exhibition. The mural, executed in tones of brick red, beige and white, features a collage of scenes depicting industrial youth engaging in woodworking and reading at desks, with the central theme of a bee above a microscope and violin. There is a further landing with a circular column of glazed blue tiles, and a further double-width flight to reach the junior assembly hall. This top-floor hall has an exposed metal girder roof of shallow pitch and a stage at the north end. The infant assembly hall below has a ceiling of encased beams. The dining hall has a similar beam ceiling. The nursery ranges, with clerestory lights that open as hoppers, have a similar metal girder roof structure of shallow pitch, with the underside of the roof constructed of wire wool. The classrooms are simply fitted out with ceilings of encased beams and generous windows.

Historical Context

The London School Plan produced by the London County Council in 1947 included as its first priorities a handful of primary schools to be built in or near large housing estates then under construction, particularly its own estates at White City, Tulse Hill and Woodberry Down. Plans for Woodberry Down Primary were commissioned as early as May 1945, along with Tulse Hill (now demolished) and Abney Park. The school at Woodberry Down was begun in early 1949, just after construction began on Horn Park in Eltham (now demolished). The 1947 plan provided for a primary school for 560 children and a nursery school for 120 children at Woodberry Grove on the County Council's new Woodberry Down Estate, the largest of its immediate post-war developments. The design, largely as built, was published in January 1948 in both the Architect and Building News and the RIBA Journal (though not explicitly named as Woodberry Down at the time). In December 1948 permission was sought to erect the school in two sections to meet the immediate need for places. Work began in January 1949 and, whilst not the first permanent post-war London County Council school to begin construction, it was the first to be designed. It is also the earliest to survive.

The London Government Act of 1939 permitted the London County Council to buy any work of art or contribute to its cost or maintenance, and a second Act in 1940 allowed it also to commission art. In late 1951 the London County Council received a windfall when the Arts Council granted it a number of works salvaged from the Festival of Britain. The 'Scraffito' mural by Augustus Lunn was taken from the South Bank's 'Seaside' exhibit, designed by Eric Brown and Peter Chamberlin immediately in front of the Royal Festival Hall. Two other murals and some sculpture also from the Festival of Britain were installed at Woodberry Down Secondary School; these were taken into store when that building was demolished. Augustus Lunn (1905–86) was a specialist painter of murals, particularly in tempera. The cement medium used in the Woodberry Down mural appears to have been a novelty. He taught at Kingston College of Art for much of his career. In his private work he straddled the boundary between realism and abstraction, much inspired by Giorgio de Chirico and Edward Wadsworth. He was also highly regarded as a restorer of murals as well as a painter of new ones.

Significance

The London County Council Woodberry Down Primary School was conceived just after the Second World War as part of the London School Plan of 1947. Its design was published early in 1948 and work commenced the following year. Research has shown that it has special historic interest as the first permanent post-war London County Council school to be designed (and none begun any earlier survive). The school survives remarkably well, and its quintessentially early post-war Scandinavian-inspired styling remains apparent and is rare in this period when most schools were of prefabricated construction with an altogether different aesthetic. It has special architectural interest, represented in the quality of the pale brickwork, the matte tilework, the shallow pitched roofs and blocky massing, the jaunty lettering, and the impressive scraffito mural imported from the Festival of Britain's South Bank site. It is one of a small group of non-prefabricated schools that illustrates the capital's immediately post-war approach and compares well with the one other listed school of this period in London (the Susan Lawrence School in the London Borough of Tower Hamlets). Separately listed is the nation's first National Health Service health centre at Woodberry Down (John Scott Health Centre, 1948–52), and these two components of the London County Council's progressive estate both have individual special architectural and historic interest as exemplars of their type.