Professional Development Centre (Formerly South Grove School), With Associated Handicraft/Woodwork Block, Boundary Wall And Iron Gates

This site comprises two former board schools representing different eras of London's pioneering state education system: an 1874 school by Edward Robert Robson, the School Board for London's architect, with additions from 1904 (the western school); and its 1904 replacement by Thomas James Bailey (the eastern school). Both buildings have undergone minor later alterations.

The Western School (1874)

Robson's 1874 building is constructed of stock brick with red brick dressings, slate roofs curbed by parapets, tall brick chimneys and white-painted wooden windows. Although originally two storeys in part, floors have been removed internally, though the external elevations still read as a mixture of single and two-storey components. The architectural style is transitory, combining residual Gothic elements with hints of Queen Anne—appropriate for a period when London School Board architecture was crystallising into a recognisable house style under Robson's direction.

The westernmost portion presents a two-storey south front towards Ropery Street, with handsome exposed chimneybreasts at either end bisecting the gable ends on the east and west returns. A single-storey hall range runs back from this front block. A second parallel range to the east, also single storey, features a small timber cupola and three windows in the end gable; the front section of this range is a later addition. A shorter block, set back from the street frontage, links the two long ranges. This has two storeys with a later opening at ground floor level to the front (this part dates from 1904), and single storey behind. Another 1904 addition is the single-storey entrance lobby to the west of the main block, with two separate doors—presumably for girls and boys. Near here, set at the base of the western chimneybreast, is a remarkable stone relief plaque depicting Knowledge Vanquishing Ignorance, original to the building's first phase.

Internally, the building has been stripped back to its brick shell with floors removed, so few internal features such as parquet floors or staircases survive. However, surviving elements of interest include a small number of panelled timber doors, a glazed brick lobby, exposed timber roof trusses in the hall (king post) and the eastern two classrooms (with scissor trusses), and a single fireplace. The plan is of particular interest for its contrast with later board school forms. Rather than having a central hall, this building follows a much more traditional layout, similar to the 'monitor system' schools of the earlier 19th century, where a single teacher supervised assistants in each classroom.

The Eastern School (1904)

Bailey's 1904 board school is a three-storey stock brick building with red brick dressings and terracotta ornaments and copings. The roofs are tiled and there is an octagonal cupola of timber and copper at the centre. The windows are timber, painted white.

The south front facing Ropery Street has a tall centre comprising three storeys of halls with large windows, separated by piers with scrolled brackets above the first storey, rising to an ornamental broken parapet over the top storey that curbs the high hipped roof. To either side are slender stair towers with high shaped gables. These are flanked by slightly lower links, and there is a gabled wing to the east; its counterpart to the west was never built. The north front has windows in triplets, terracotta banding along the top storey and gables. Its projecting eastern wing has a straight gable and a terracotta cartouche inscribed 'South Grove School AD 1904'. The single stair tower here has a copper ogee domed roof. The east end towards Southern Grove has one straight gable in the centre; the west end is plainer, level with a parapet, presumably because it was intended to link to the second, unbuilt wing. There are separate entrances for Boys, Girls, and Infants, all with inscribed lettering in the lintels and original steps and iron railings. The inscribed lintel in the western elevation entrance has been covered.

Inside, the standard plan is readable on each of the three storeys: a central hall with a single bank of classrooms down one side, and corridors leading to clusters of classrooms in the wings. There has been some subdivision or opening up of two of the halls and some classrooms. Mezzanines between the floors overlook the corridors—these were the former staff and headteacher's rooms. In the attic, the former drawing or science classrooms retain their timber roof trusses. There are hardwood block floors, glazed brick dados (mostly painted), and semi-circular glazed fanlights and internal windows in most corridors and classrooms; the upper floor corridors have skylights. There are four stairwells, each with russet glazed brick walls, metal balustrades to the upper flights and hardwood handrails lower down; the glazed brick in all but the upper sections of one stair has been painted. A single fireplace survives in one of the former staffrooms.

Associated Buildings and Boundary Features

A third block, probably originally a handicraft or woodwork block with open arcades at ground floor (now infilled) and workshops above, stands to the north of the 1904 school and is likely contemporary with it. It has shaped gable ends with stone kneelers and ball finials and a king post timber roof inside. There is a high brick wall around the southern and eastern sides of the site, with piers at regular intervals and the original wrought iron gates.

Historical Background

Unusually, the first school was not demolished when the second was completed, but instead served as a special school after 1904. The buildings were known as South Grove School, after the street running alongside the eastern boundary (now called Southern Grove), commemorated in the plaque reading 'South Grove School 1904'.

The Elementary Education Act of 1870, steered through Parliament by William Forster and known as 'Forster's Act', was the first to establish national, secular, non-charitable provision for the education of children aged 5 to 13. A driving force behind the legislation was the need for a literate and numerate workforce to ensure Britain remained at the forefront of manufacture and commerce. Moreover, the extension of the franchise to urban working classes in the 1867 Reform Act alerted politicians to the need to, in words attributed to the then Chancellor, 'educate our masters'. The Act required partially state-funded elementary schools to be established where existing provision was inadequate, managed by elected school boards.

The School Board of London, founded in 1870, was the first and most influential. It was one of the first truly democratic elected bodies in Britain, with both women and working-class members. It comprised 49 members under the chairmanship of the former Viceroy of India, Lord Lawrence, and included five members of parliament, eleven clergymen, the scientist Thomas Huxley, suffragists Emily Davies (an educationalist) and Elizabeth Garrett Anderson (a doctor), and a working-class cabinetmaker, Benjamin Lucraft. The Board's politics were ambitious and progressive, epitomised by its passing of a by-law in 1871 compelling parents to send children to school—not compulsory nationally until 1880.

Such was the achievement of the London School Board in the last quarter of the 19th century that by the Edwardian period, few London neighbourhoods were without a red brick, Queen Anne style, three-storey school designed by Edward Robert Robson, the Board's architect, or his successor Thomas James Bailey. The Board's adoption of the newly fashionable Queen Anne style was a significant departure from the Gothic Revival deemed appropriate to educational buildings until that point, and created a distinctive and highly influential board school aesthetic. Around 500 board schools were built in London, many in densely populated, poor areas where they were—and often remain—the most striking buildings in their locales.

The Board did not escape criticism, both on grounds of expense to ratepayers and for potentially radicalising the urban poor through secular education. Yet its supporters were unapologetic, as the words of Charles Booth, justifying the expense of more elaborate schools in the East End, indicate: 'It was necessary to strike the eye and hold the imagination. It was worth much to carry high the flag of education, and this is what has been done. Each school stands up from its playground like a church in God's acre, ringing its bell'. Sherlock Holmes in Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's 'The Naval Treaty' (1894) also lauded the new metropolitan landmarks as 'Beacons of the future! Capsules with hundreds of bright little seeds in each, out of which will spring the wiser, better England of the future', thus epitomising the reformers' confidence in the power of universal education to transform society. The unpopularity of the board with ratepayers, however, led to its abolition in 1902, and responsibility for educating London's children fell to the London County Council. At first, they retained Thomas James Bailey as architect, so schools continued to be built in the board school idiom. The striking design of many Board and LCC schools is thus illustrative of this special history.

Significance

Both the eastern and western parts of the Professional Development Centre are of special interest because one block is a fairly rare, early (1874) school by Edward Robert Robson, built in the period when no two London schools were the same, and as the Queen Anne style was emerging as the board's signature idiom. The chimney bears a handsome plaque depicting Knowledge Vanquishing Ignorance. The eastern school building (1904) is a fulsome expression of Thomas James Bailey's later style, and epitomises the 'sweetness and light' character of board schools architecture. The two former schools form a unique group, telling the history of London board school architecture at a glance.