Bowes Road Clinic

TQ29SE BOWES ROAD 790/22/10052 (South side) 14-AUG-00 Bowes Road Clinic

GV II

Health Clinic. 1938-40 by Middlesex County Council Architect's Department, W T Curtis, County Architect and H W Burchett, Assistant Architect to the Education Committee. Brown brick laid in English bond with attractive diaper pattern, flat felted roofs supported on concrete beams. `L'-shaped plan; single-storied but with stepped profile created by rooms of differing ceiling heights. Corner boiler stack. Entrance to front under projecting porch, reached via short attached flight of steps set at right angles; timber set-back door. All windows are metal, with horizontal pattern of small panes; side-opening casements and pivoting or hinged toplights. The interiors are deliberately simple, with some surviving timber doors with glazed upper panel and exposed roof beams. A small post-war extension is not of special interest.

Curtis and Burchett established a distinctive idiom for the architecture of Middlesex County Council from 1932 onwards, based on the style adopted so successfully by Willem Dudok, architect of Hilversum, the Netherlands. The style combined a partial concrete frame with brick cladding to produce an architecture that was streamlined and modern in style, relatively cheap to construct, yet imbued with civic dignity and a strong presence. The clinic forms a strong group with the slightly earlier adjoining swimming baths and library, and is one of their richest compositions, well massed and with a judicious use of simple ornament. The clinic was originally designed for the medical inspection of school children.

Sources Minutes of Southgate Urban District Council, May 1937 School Medical Officer's Report, 1938