78, Chiltern Street

TQ 2881 NW CHILTERN STREET (west side) 1900-/44/10045 No. 78

II

Former school to the Portman Chapel, now flats, workrooms and library. 1859 by Christopher Eales, minor alterations 1880s. Red brick with concrete floors and iron girders spanning the ceilings, slate roof. A carefully thought-out plan to provide maximum separation between girls and boys on a tiny site. Three-storey houses for the schoolmaster and mistress (now flats) face the street, entered under archways: that to left for boys, leading via open tiled stairwell to schoolroom on second floor; that to right leading to yard, formerly with open colonnade, infilled in the 1880s by the Henson brothers. Classrooms at rear and over courtyard, in L-shape of four storeys, with separate floors for infants, girls and boys in ascending order. On top floor an assembly hall shared by all the children, with timber kingpost and hammerbeam roof of unusually chunky construction.

Included as an early surviving example of a church school in a city centre, obtaining a maximum of accommodation on a small site by use of features later adopted by the London School Board.

Source: The Builder, 12 November 1859.

Listing NGR: TQ2804881857