Hillyfields Sixth Form Centre

Hillyfields Sixth Form Centre

School building comprising three distinct phases of construction. The north section was built in 1884–5 by Charles Evans as the West Kent Grammar School. The building was extended southwards for the Brockley County Secondary School by the London County Council in 1913–14 and again in 1921.

The north part of 1884–5 is asymmetrical in Jacobean style. It is constructed of red brick with stone dressings, a tiled roof and brick chimneystacks. The building is two storeys with five windows. End gables with kneelers each contain double casement windows to each floor under brick relieving arches. A central wooden octagonal cupola with lead roof and iron weathervane sits above a parapet. The left bay has a casement window to each floor, the central bay features a stepped casement to the ground floor in a round-headed arch, and the right side has a two-storey canted bay with balustraded parapet and a pedimented entrance with half columns.

Large southward extensions were added by the London County Council in 1913–14 and 1921. These include an assembly hall to the east, a single-storey red brick structure with a gable containing a large traceried window, two hipped dormers and two smaller traceried windows to the side elevations.

Internally, the front vestibule contains murals of indifferent quality with historical subjects by Geoffrey Cook, David Hitchcock and R Smith. A staircase of 1913–14 features iron railings with a mahogany handrail and a blue tiled dado.

The exceptional feature of the building is the series of mural paintings in the Assembly Hall executed between 1933 and 1936 by four painters associated with the Royal College of Art: Charles Mahoney, Evelyn Dunbar, Mildred Eldridge and Violet Martin. These murals are considered among the most important achievements of twentieth-century mural painting. The hall is designed in Perpendicular style with five bays, a hammer beam roof and a gallery to the east. Five wall panels, a mural to the gallery front and murals under the gallery contain the painted schemes.

The north side west panel depicts "Fortune and the Boy at the Well" by Charles Mahoney. The north side east panel depicts "The Country Girl and the Milk Pail" by Evelyn Dunbar. The south side east panel, entitled "The Bird Catcher and the Skylark" by Mildred Eldridge, is dated 1934. The south side west panel shows "The King and Two Shepherds" by Violet Martin.

The gallery front features murals by Evelyn Dunbar depicting the Hilly Fields, with allegorical figures to left and right, one holding a plan of the school and the other a plan of Hilly Fields. Boys in contemporary dress return from school along railings entwined with plants. Above are two figures of boys, one in rugby clothes and the other as a scholar. The wider gallery spandrels and lunettes are mainly by Evelyn Dunbar, though three panels are by Charles Mahoney, drawn largely from Aesop's Fables.

The paintings belong to the Romantic and Narrative School of English painting, influenced by the Pre-Raphaelites. The best-known painters of this group were Stanley Spencer and Eric Ravilious. Such murals are rare. Comparable examples include Whistler's Tate Gallery Refreshment Room murals of 1926, murals at Morley College, Lambeth of 1929 by Edward Bawden, Eric Ravilious and Charles Mahoney (some destroyed by bomb damage), and murals in the village hall at Wood Green, Hampshire by Robert Baker and Edward Payne.

The high perspective viewpoint of the hall panels, raised six feet off the ground, is of particular interest. No work of comparable scale by Evelyn Dunbar exists. Charles Mahoney's work at Brockley is superior to his murals in the Lady Chapel of Campion Hall. Mildred Eldridge painted only one other public work.

The panel "Fortune and the Boy at the Well" was included in an exhibition at the Barbican, "The Last Romantics", in 1989.

This building is listed solely because of the high quality and rarity of the mural paintings executed between 1933 and 1936.