St James'S Primary School

31/0/10409 FRIERN BARNET LANE 26-OCT-01 209 St James's Primary School

GV II

Former St James's Parochial School. 1853. By Edward and William Gilbee Habershon. Gothic Revival school with attached teacher's house. Pebble-dashed exterior with Portland stone dressings, yellow brick chimney stacks, tiled roof. Street front with central gabled porch flanked by four-light Gothic windows with gauged brick arches; porch has an arched opening with arched plan door beyond, hood mould, moulded stone kneelers, a stone shield inscribed BOYS above, and triangular windows to sides. Gable to right containing triple-light window. Right hand return with porch (similar to that on front) and a three- and a four-light window either side of a chimney stack. Two-storey range to left containing former teacher's house with paired lights to ground floor with hood-mould, single light to first floor; return on left side with arched doorway surmounted by single light above; paired lights to ground floor on left surmounted by two lights to first floor. Tall paired chimney stack at north end of roof ridge' slightly lower projection at north end. Rear elevation has a belfry, twin gables with hood-moulded windows within and Gothic lights; mid C20 addition to rear of lesser interest. INTERIOR: few original features survive in situ. Double-height roof to main classroom has lowered ceiling, concealing exposed rafters shown in early photographs. Moulded consoles still visible. HISTORY: this school replaced a charity school of 1809, and was built at the same time as the Habershons' remodelling of St James's church. The school was closed in 1975 and then became used as a nursery school; a plaque in the rear extension records its re-opening as such in 1977 by the then-MP for East Finchley, Margaret Thatcher. The school is a picturesque composition, in the pre-Puginian phase of the Gothic Revival, and is constructed of self-consciously local building materials. It possesses good group value with the adjacent Lawrence Campe almshouses to the west. See S. Gillies and P. Taylor, 'Finchley and Friern Barnet' pls. 82-83.