Rachel Mcmillan Nursery

Rachel McMillan Nursery School

This open-air nursery school was opened in 1914, with the surviving main range built in 1918, 1921, 1933, and 1937–8. The architects of the final phase were the London County Council Architect's Department, succeeding Edward Unwin who had extended the offices in 1933. The building is constructed of stock brick with steep tiled roofs and short stacks to the rear.

The main block comprises two self-contained classrooms, each with its own toilet and washing facilities, and a two-storey office range at the end, originally built in 1918 and later extended with a superintendent's flat above. The classrooms are protected by a glazed canopy on timber columns shielding their south facades, substantially surviving from the original design. Both classrooms feature large timber windows and doors. The office is entered beneath a round-headed door with a gauged brick head, and has meal windows to the office itself; the upper windows have horizontal panes. The north elevation is largely unwindowed brick with a short canopy covering the office range. The interiors contain painted brick and timber doors, with each classroom having its own ablutions.

The Rachel McMillan Nursery School was until the Second World War the only large school built specifically for nursery-age children under five, and held international significance. It was the achievement of two sisters, Rachel McMillan (1859–1917) and Margaret McMillan (1860–1931). Although substantially rebuilt in the years following Margaret's death, the school still demonstrates their beliefs in a healthy open-air regime and careful nurture as the best means of giving urban children a good start in life. While other built evidence of their lifelong campaign for child health and welfare in London and Bradford has been lost or no longer demonstrates the qualities they championed, the main part of the school from 1918–21 substantially survives. That anything survives is remarkable, as Margaret believed in lightweight temporary shelters as the best form of school building.

The educational regime established at the school provided a nine-hour day, with children receiving their morning wash and three meals at the school, an afternoon nap, and substantial time spent in outdoor play and nature studies. An obituary in The Labour Woman for May 1931 described Margaret McMillan as "the most heroic figure in the world of education up to now" for her vision, oratory, and persistent dedication to child health, and she was the English equivalent of Maria Montessori in her work with underprivileged urban children. The classrooms of 1921 were opened by Queen Mary. Her later patrons included Lord and Lady Astor, Stanley Baldwin, and Ramsay MacDonald; her earlier career was bound up with that of the Independent Labour Party, of which she was a founder member. This is the most significant nursery school of its date in England.

Edward Unwin, who died in 1936, was the school's architect in the 1930s and the son of Sir Raymond Unwin, the distinguished town planner. Unwin established brick and large timber windows behind the earlier glazed canopies as the principal idiom of the school.