84, Margaret Street W1

Former Parish School and Church House, now Buddhist Temple

84 Margaret Street, Westminster. Built 1868–70, designed by architect William Butterfield, with contractor Foster of Whitefriars. Grade II* listed.

This is a striking three-storey building above basement, constructed in red Fareham bricks with blue, black and white brick in English bond. The decorative scheme features banding and polychrome diaper work to the top storey, with Bath stone bands and dressings throughout. The roofs are covered in blue Welsh slate with red ridge tiles, set behind stone-coped parapets. A tall gabled roof rises at the right side, flanked by varied subsidiary gables, with a central nine-flue chimney featuring linked octagonal shafts and moulded stone bases, mounted on a tall crow-stepped chimney breast.

The building occupies a restricted corner site of approximately 60 feet by 70 feet, with a front area and small central courtyard. The left portion originally housed the church house, accessed via the main entrance which runs beneath the frontage into the courtyard. The right portion contained the school, with classrooms stacked vertically: adults in the basement, girls and infants on the upper ground and first floors, and boys on the second floor. A secondary entrance to the school is located around the corner on Marylebone Passage.

The architectural style draws on late 13th-century Early Decorated Gothic. The irregular five-bay main facade features an off-centre porch of three storeys, narrow and gabled, with projecting buttresses on the ground floor and a moulded chamfered stone arch with dripmould. The porch, originally fitted with reset iron gates, is now closed with modern glazed timber doors. The first floor has narrow coupled sash windows with horizontal bars beneath segmental brick header arches. The second floor contains two recessed sash windows set under stone heads, with a cusped oval recess housing a cross and elaborate diaper work in blue and red headers in the spandrel, flanked by tall stone colonettes and moulded stone dripmould.

To the left of the porch stand coupled narrow wooden sash windows beneath segmental heads, with an arched stone dripmould over the left window on the second floor and a stone parapeted gable above. To the right of the porch, the schoolroom section displays two triple windows on the basement, upper ground, and first floors, with a large triple second-floor attic window. Basement windows sit beneath segmental arches, while upper ground and first-floor windows have splayed stone ledges with narrow triple sashes separated by tall stone colonettes, supporting chamfered rectangular heads and lintels with inner moulded trefoil heads. Second-floor windows feature narrow sashes in deep reveals below splayed stone heads with inner trefoils. A two-light central window of tall sashes, separated by tall colonettes, has outer stone lancet heads and inner trefoils, topped by a lunette with inner cinquefoil and chamfered stone arched outer surround. Elaborate cross-pattern diaper work appears above a stone band at cill level, with infilling on the parapeted gabled end and side dormers facing Marylebone Passage. An entrance beneath a moulded stone arch with dripmould is now closed by modern doors. The rear elevation features a flat parapeted roof to the left and a gable to the right.

Interior

The interior was originally simply finished with plain plaster and colourwashed brickwork. The second-floor classroom retains exposed arch-braced tie beam trusses. The first-floor classroom is now decorated as a Buddhist shrine. The ground-floor classroom has a raised end partitioned off as an office. The basement former classroom retains its original fireplace with chamfered wood surround supporting a shelf on curved jowls. Many rooms retain original six and eight-panel doors. Twin leaf framed and battened doors with scrolled iron hinges lead from the Marylebone Passage entrance.

Historical Context

This school completes Butterfield's seminal group of buildings in Margaret Street. All Saints Church, opposite, stands as a landmark both in the Gothic Revival and in Ecclesiology. Its clergy house and choir school, built simultaneously between 1849 and 1853, established a distinctive tough urban architecture in brick with polychrome diaper decoration and stone banding. The parish school, opened in 1870 at a cost of £5,000, adopts a more assertive and demonstrative style than the earlier buildings, yet maintains affinity through association, shared architect, and group value.