Stonebridge School, Including Former Caretaker'S House, Playground Shelter And Cookery And Laundry To Nw, Former Manual Instruction Room And Playground Shelter To Se, And Boundary Walls, Gates And Railings

Stonebridge School is a primary school built in 1899 to 1900 by Willesden School Board, Middlesex, to the design of George Evelyn Tidmarsh Laurence. The listing includes the former caretaker's house, playground shelter and cookery and laundry to the north-west, former manual instruction room and playground shelter to the south-east, and boundary walls, gates and railings.

Materials and Construction

The school is built of red brick with cut and moulded-brick detailing, Portland stone dressings, and clay tile and green copper roofs.

Plan

The building has a symmetrical rectangular plan on three floors, aligned north-east to south-west. It follows the standardised ER Robson Board School plan of a hall on each floor, with classrooms clustered around it on three sides: three parallel to the hall on the south-east side, and two to the north-east and south-west in crosswings. Polygonal tourelles are set diagonally to the north-west and south-west angles, each containing two entrances (Boys' and Girls') and two staircases.

Exterior

The school is designed in the Queen Anne manner. Windows have gauged-brick keyed arches, mainly cambered, and moulded brick cills; those to the first floor have scrolled aprons. Moulded string-courses run between floors, continuing beneath the cills. A moulded cornice runs above. Flemish gables with pinnacles to either side are finished in red-coloured render, on moulded brick corbels. Segmental-pedimented dormers have carved tympana. The main body of the school has mullion-and-transom windows with paired timber sashes and top-hung casements above.

The principal north-west elevation is of two-two-two bays, with the outer bays set forward and surmounted by gables with tall round-headed windows flanked by small rectangular windows. The tourelles flank this elevation; each comprises a large main tower with an octagonal roof and small cupola with lucarnes, and a slender canted stair tower to either side, also with an octagonal roof; the top stages are set back. The stair towers have separate Boys' and Girls entrances in stone with carved segmental pediments; a tablet on the side of the latter is inscribed 'Stonebridge School'; scrolled pediments feature above the first-floor windows; octagonal green copper roofs top the towers. Similar Infants' entrances are set in the inner angles of the tourelles. A modern extension is not of special interest.

The rear south-east elevation is of two-two-two-two-two bays; the central six bays are similar to the front elevation; the outer pairs of bays are set back and have dormers with segmental pediments. The left-hand south-west bays have repeat fenestration of the right-hand north-east bays except that the lower parts of the former are intentionally blind (not blocked); the attic is also blind. Two ground-floor windows have been modified as doors.

The side elevations, to the south-west and north-east, are of four bays with a gable to the inner two bays; the outer two bays of the latter have part-blind windows.

Interior

The interior is generally plainly finished. The plan is generally as built, but with some classrooms subdivided. Most doors have been replaced. The second-floor hall has an arch-braced roof. The stairs have a simple iron balustrade and brown glazed-brick walls. Brown glazed-brick dados extend to most areas (some overpainted).

Subsidiary Features

Cast-iron gates and railings stand on a low brick boundary wall; the gate piers have stone domed caps.

The outbuildings are in a complementary Queen Anne style. Along the north-west boundary of the playground is a range comprising a long playground shelter supported on cast-iron columns, flanked on the south-west side by a single-storey building: the former cookery and laundry (identified in an inscription to the carved segmental pediment over the door), with a Flemish gable matching those of the school, and on the north-east side by a two-storey caretaker's house, both buildings with timber sash windows. The house has a timber doorcase on the front north-east elevation; the right-hand bay breaks forward and has a canted bay window to the ground floor and a large tripartite dormer above with carved segmental pediment and cut-brick scrolled apron; an identical dormer appears on the south-east elevation. The building has a hipped roof.

To the south-east boundary is the former manual instruction room (identified in a carved inscription to the door lintel) of one storey with dormers and a Flemish gable end, attached to which is a playground shelter. This range is plainer than that to the north-west boundary. The interiors are not of special interest.

Historical Context

Until the Elementary Education Act of 1870, education was largely left to voluntary initiatives, with the churches or local charities as the main providers for the poorer classes. The Act, steered through Parliament by William Forster and thus known as 'Forster's Act', actively supported by Gladstone, was the first to set a national, secular framework for the education of children aged 5 to 13. A driving force behind the Act was the need for a literate and numerate workforce to ensure that Britain remained at the forefront of manufacture and improvement. It required partially state-funded elementary schools to be set up in areas where existing provision was inadequate, to be managed by elected school boards. The churches and other pressure groups had opposed state-provided education. Reactionary opinion generally favoured church schools, and was concerned that secular and radical (as it was perceived) education provided by the board schools may threaten the status quo by teaching the labouring classes to think, but the Act's intention was to supplement rather than duplicate denominational schools in areas of most need. The new legislation resulted in a surge of school building across the country. The Education Act of 1902, steered in by Balfour's Conservative Government, abolished the 2,568 school boards and replaced them with Local Education Authorities.

ER Robson, appointed as architect to the School Board for London in 1871, developed the characteristic Queen Anne style as a secular alternative to the Gothic of Anglican schools. This interpretation of the red brick, sash windowed, vernacular idiom of houses of the late 17th and early 18th centuries lent itself to a template for the large-scale designs required for schools, as well as for the large windows needed to light classrooms. Robson's 1874 book 'School Architecture' was highly influential, and his standard Board School plan was widely emulated.

Until the late 19th century Willesden was still on the rural fringes of London but was transformed into a densely built-up suburb of largely lower-middle and working-class housing after Willesden Junction station was opened in 1866. By the 1880s a clear deficiency in the number of voluntary school places available was emerging and, in the face of considerable opposition from local Anglican churches, the Education Department made an order for the compulsory formation of a school board in Willesden in 1882, and compelled the board to open a temporary school in the Wesleyan lecture hall in Harlesden in 1885, and to build its first board school there in 1891. Before it was superseded in 1904, Willesden School Board opened another 12, mainly large, schools and several special schools. The 15 voluntary schools provided 10,217 places and the board schools another 10,876.

George Evelyn Tidmarsh Laurence (1860 to 1922) was articled under FE Morris of Colchester and worked for 7 years as an assistant to ER Robson at the School Board for London. He designed several schools for the Willesden School Board and its successor body, Willesden Education Authority, and for Edmonton, Tottenham and Wood Green school boards, Middlesex. While evidently continuing to practise in London, Laurence became sole architect to the Swansea Education Authority around 1891, for which he designed a number of schools, in which capacity he acted until his death.