Former St Mark'S School

Former St Mark's School

A former Church of England elementary school for girls and infants, designed in 1910 by the architect Charles Henry Bourne Quennell (1872–1935). The building is constructed of red brick in a mixture of Flemish and stretcher bond, with some yellow and black brick and tile-on-edge decoration. It has a tiled roof with a central, tapering, octagonal lead cupola and three tall, panelled brick chimneystacks. The windows are wooden mullioned and transomed casement windows with leaded lights.

The building is a single-storey structure, double-piled in the centre, with a symmetrical plan comprising an infants' school to the east and girls' school to the west. The infants' school contained a babies room and two classrooms; the girls' school contained four classrooms. Each school had an assembly hall in the centre of the front range that could be joined by a folding screen. A joint head teacher's room and cloakrooms occupied the rear.

The north or entrance front features a central section of five bays over the assembly halls with a higher gabled roof. The central three bays have tripartite windows, with the central one obscured by a lower projecting porch with corner buttresses, cambered arch and double doors. The end windows, also tripartite, are situated under projecting hipped roofs. The lower pavilions at each end originally had blank walls with decorated buttresses; a later window has been inserted into the western pavilion. The gable ends facing east and west have kneelers and a diaper pattern in yellow brickwork, with three-tier mullioned and transomed windows. On either side are set-back windows before canted bays with four casement windows under hips with decorative gablets. A small single-storey extension has been added to the west side, obscuring the west window, inserted after 1943. The east and west side elevations each have a shallow entrance porch with recessed cambered arch with fanlight and half-glazed double doors. The east side additionally has two casement windows, one of which has been modified. The rear elevation comprises 19 bays. The recessed centre contains five bays with three large three-tier windows breaking through the eaves under hips, divided by narrow casements. This is flanked by projecting gables decorated with black brick diaper patterns and moulded brick and tile-on-edge decoration to the kneelers. The large three-tier casement windows have stepped terracotta lintels. The ends are recessed and each contain two large three-tier windows breaking through the eaves under hips, divided by a narrow casement and with three wider casements to the ends.

Internally, the central corridors at each end of the building retain half-glazed doors with segmental fanlights and Arts and Crafts style decorative brass handles and hinges. The assembly halls retain their original tall fielded panelling with moulded cornice, although the spaces have been altered by later partitions. Above the later twentieth-century suspended ceilings, the original ogee-braced roof structure survives. The folding partition between the two halls is no longer present. The former joint head teacher's room retains the original slender wooden fireplace with moulded cornice and cast iron firegrate. Some classrooms retain brown glazed wall tiles.

St Mark's School was one of only two schools designed by Charles Henry Bourne Quennell, whose architectural practice was primarily devoted to middle-class suburban housing, particularly in Hampstead, Bickley Park and Northwood. Quennell worked in the offices of Newman and Newman, and of J.D. Sedding and Henry Wilson, establishing his own practice in 1896. His buildings employed an individual blend of Arts and Crafts and Queen Anne styles, developing into a dignified but austere Neo-Georgian style. Beyond suburban houses, his commissions included churches around London, a Byzantine-inspired mausoleum (Grade II) in St Mary's Cemetery, Hammersmith, country houses including the Grade A listed Aultmore in Nethybridge, Scotland, and designs for gardens, interiors and furniture. Hermann Muthesius in "The English House" (1904) described him as "the master of pen-and-ink drawing". Like Baillie Scott, Quennell designed standardised Arts and Crafts furniture, particularly inglenooks and fireplaces, for J.P. White of Bedford. He was a member of the Junior Art Workers Guild, where he met his future wife Marjorie Courtney, an artist and designer, whom he married in 1904. Quennell wrote "The Cathedral Church of Norwich" in 1900 and a folio book, "Modern Suburban Houses" in 1906. During the First World War, the Quennells began research for a book on English history from the perspective of ordinary people and their surroundings. The first volume, "A History of Everyday Things in England 1066–1499", was published in 1918; by the time Quennell died in 1935, there were eleven volumes, credited with major influence on the direction of history teaching in the mid-twentieth century. The architect lived locally and gained the school commission likely through a connection with E.A. Hellicar, architect of the parent church, St Mark's on Westmoreland Road (1897–98). The original drawings survive and the building was the subject of an illustrated article in "The Builder" of 18 March 1927. Currently, 23 buildings by Quennell are statutorily listed in England.

The building ceased to be a school in the 1980s and has since been in office use.