Former Berner Street Combined Special School With Cookery And Laundry Centres

Former Berner Street Combined Special School with Cookery and Laundry Centres, Stepney

This is a special school built in 1903, designed by TJ Bailey for the School Board for London. It has undergone minor later alterations.

Exterior

The building is constructed of two storeys with a pitched slate roof along the front range to Henriques Street, which features louvred dormers. The rear has a flat roof that serves as a rooftop playground, where brick piers and iron railings form a parapet. The Henriques Street façade employs red bricks with Portland stone dressings. There are four bays of regular fenestration: large segmental arched windows with marginal lights and stone keystones on the ground floor, and paired rectangular sashes above. These are offset by an entrance bay and a square tower to the right. The stone-faced entrance has a segmental head with a tall keystone bisecting the lintel. To either side of the entrance, the words 'Cookery' and 'Laundry' are inscribed. Above the porch are two stone panels bearing the date '1903' and the monogram of London's School Board 'SBL'. The square tower has corner pilasters in bands of brick and stone terminating in triangular stone caps. Atop the tower is a timber and lead cupola with a very slender copper finial and weathervane. The returns and rear elevations are constructed in stock brick with simpler detailing, featuring simple rubbed red brick arches to the windows.

A 1909 extension built as a manual training centre and additional classroom runs back from the rear corner. This is a modest single-storey stock brick building with red brick window dressings and pitched slate roofs, and is not included in the listing.

Interior

Original features survive throughout. These include a russet glazed brick stairwell with concrete stairs and metal balustrade; a first-floor hall with glazed bricks to dado height, original joinery and parquet floors; classrooms with corner chimneystacks, mantelshelves and original joinery; a rooftop playground with a covered play area and WCs; and a children's bathing cubicle with glazed bricks on the ground floor.

Boundary Features

Running alongside Henriques Street are handsome boundary railings with vase finials and three separate iron gates. Two gates have lintels inscribed 'BOYS' and one inscribed 'M.T.C.' (Manual Training Centre). Each gate bears the SBL monogram. The northernmost gate was originally the girls' entrance; the raised lettering was later removed and incised lettering added when the school switched to accommodating older boys.

Historical Context

When built in 1903, two board schools were located near the site: a three-storey Edwardian school designed by TJ Bailey on Fairclough Street (which survives), and an older school of 1886 by ER Robson on Berner Street (which was extended to designs by Bailey in 1910 and has since been demolished). The special school was originally intended to serve children whose physical or mental health meant their needs were not met by regular board schools. They were to be taught cookery, laundering and other manual tasks alongside traditional subjects. In 1902, however, the School Board decided to continue educational provision for older boys aged 12-16 who required additional training. When the school opened in 1903, it served older boys, though girls from nearby schools likely used the first floor cookery and laundry classrooms and rooftop playground. The school represents an early and now quite rare example of educational provision for older children whose circumstances meant they required additional care into their teens.

In 1909, facilities were extended with a single-storey classroom and manual training centre built to the rear; the main block may also have been altered at this date. Further alterations were carried out in 1939 when the ground floor was adapted to become a school treatment centre. Some internal windows were blocked up and new walls built; one external window has a replacement metal frame.

The Elementary Education Act of 1870, steered through Parliament by William Forster and known as 'Forster's Act', was the first to establish a national, secular, non-charitable provision for the education of children aged 5-13, run by local boards. The School Board of London was the first to be founded in 1870 and the most influential. It was one of the first truly democratic elected bodies in Britain, with both women and members of the working classes on the board. The Board's politics were ambitious and progressive, exemplified by its passing of a by-law in 1871 compelling parents to send children to school—a measure not compulsory nationally until 1880. The Board was also one of the first to provide special facilities for mentally and physically disadvantaged children, with special schools built from the mid-1890s onwards, and for older boys with learning difficulties from 1902. This special school was one of the first nationally to serve the needs of the latter group.