Classroom D At Former Aspen House Open Air School

Classroom D at Former Aspen House Open Air School

This is a classroom built in 1925 by the London County Council Architect's Department as part of the pioneering Aspen House Open Air School. The building is constructed entirely of timber, with a hipped timber roof clad in felt and deep overhanging eaves. It has a square plan and is raised off the ground on timber posts supporting joists that carry the floorboards.

When first built, the classroom was fully open to the elements above timber half walls, but windows were inserted sometime after 1929, almost certainly in the 1950s. On three sides, continuous windows above the dado consist of paired side-hung casements with catches to hold them when fully open. The windows on the entrance side are three-part folding windows, also with catches. All sides have opening top lights. Two doors are reached by a short flight of steps; the door to the right is a later insertion contemporary with the windows but identical in style to the other, featuring three glazed panels to the upper half. The interior has exposed roof timbers.

The London County Council purchased the site of the former Aspen House in 1920, and plans for the new open-air school were approved in 1924. This was the fifth of the LCC's open-air schools, but the first built to an improved design that subsequently became standard for such schools and for similar schools provided for children suffering from tuberculosis. The LCC had pioneered open-air teaching in short-term accommodation as early as 1907 at Bostall Wood and from 1908 at three London sites.

Aspen House School provided classes for anaemic, asthmatic and undernourished children, with a creative educational policy based on Pestalozzi principles. Many lessons were devoted to nature study, physical exercises, gardening and creative play. The garden played a vital role in this educational regime. The trees from the orchard formerly on the site were disturbed as little as possible, with shrubs and bulbs added to provide interest for the children. Formal intervention was kept to a minimum, limited to small paths, sheltering hedges (which also encouraged wildlife habitats) and the activities of the children themselves. Children received three meals a day at the school and were required to rest for an hour in the afternoon (longer in summer) on beds in the open air. Children whose poor health disadvantaged their education in normal schools would spend an average of eighteen months here, in classes of no more than 32 to a teacher, with a nurse permanently attached to the school. Though the conditions seem harsh now, the stimulating teaching—with its accent on self-awareness and discovery, stressing the importance of open air and landscape—was advanced for its time and formed part of a wider movement for more fresh air and more informal teaching methods, widely developed only after 1945.