Montem Primary School

ISLINGTON

TQ3086SE HORNSEY ROAD 635-1/22/517 (East side) Montem Primary School

II

Former Board School. Dated 1897 in panels on the seven-storey ranges of the north front. Designed by T.J.Bailey for the London School Board. Yellow brick with dressings of gauged red brick and Portland stone; tower roofs of lead, otherwise of slate. The principal front is to the north and is of four storeys with two ranges of seven storeys; twenty-three-window range. This front is symmetrical and consists of four elements. There is a central block of five-window range which has a ground floor of brick in banded rustication and flat-arched windows; the first and second floors have tall windows lighting halls, those to the first floor flat-arched and to the second round-arched, and framed on both floors by a single round-arched arcade of giant Doric pilasters and archivolts with voussoirs; dentil cornice; attic storey with flat-arched windows with eared architraves; cornice and parapet. On either side of the central block are staircase towers with entrances on the ground floor, Girls and Infants to the left, Boys and Infants to the right; the upper cornice from the central range is carried over and, above that, there is a square tower with ogee, lead-covered roof topped by a wooden lantern with balustrade. On either side of the staircase towers are ranges with four windows and seven storeys, with date panels in cement between the fifth and sixth storeys; above that a pedimented studio window. The outermost ranges are three windows wide and treated broadly as wings matching the central block: ground-floor of brick in banded rustication with flat-arched windows; first and second floor framed by giant pilasters, the first-floor windows flat-arched, second-floor segmental; dentil cornice; pediment superimposed on attic storey; the first- and second-floor windows on the left-hand wing are mostly blank. The west front is of four storeys and eight-window range; it has a pedimented quasi-centrepiece in the third, fourth and fifth bays from the north; the three bays of the attic storey to the south are open to a rooftop playground. The south front is of four storeys and twenty-window range and simpler than the north front, with a uniform central range flanked by wings of three-window range. The east front is a simpler version of the west. INTERIOR: : the original plan included halls on the ground, first and second floors of the central block on the north side and mezzanine floors in the seven storey ranges alongside the staircase towers. These spaces survive; mezzanine floors have been introduced at all levels in the classrooms of the central block on the south side. (Historians' file, English Heritage London Division).

Listing NGR: TQ3078286383