Gordon School And Huts 1-4 In The South West Corner Of The Playground

Gordon School and Huts 1-4 in the South West Corner of the Playground

Gordon School is a board school built in 1904 to the designs of Thomas Jerram Bailey, the architect to the London School Board. It is a three-storey red brick building with buff terracotta dressings and gabled and mansard tile roofs. The school features tall brick chimneys and white-painted timber sash windows, which are sympathetic replacements of the originals.

The school has separate entrances for boys, girls and infants, each with terracotta surrounds and inscribed lintels. The original stairs and railings leading to the west elevation entrances survive; those on the east elevation, the canopy and ramp are late 20th-century additions. The east elevation has a projecting and sharply pedimented centre with wings. The centre features channelled terracotta quoins and small windows set back beneath two high arches. An ornamental round window at second-storey level on the left-hand wing has below it a terracotta cartouche inscribed "Erected Anno Domini 1904". The west front displays a central range with widely spaced windows for the halls and a raised mansard roof. Slightly lower links connect this to gabled and pedimented wings, the left wing featuring a second oculus and cartouche. The position of the two staircases, which flank the hall, is marked by terracotta cladding, semi-circular windows with terracotta voussoirs and balustraded parapets. The north and south fronts are simpler and shorter in character.

Internally, the school retains its original plan and layout. It contains a hall and eight classrooms on each of the ground, first and second floors, together with a fourth-floor attic storey that likely contained drawing classrooms. The glazed lights above the doors between the hall and corridors and classrooms survive, as do the brick-lined stairs. Some subdivision of the third-floor hall and classrooms has occurred, and the upper floors remain largely in their original educational use.

When it opened, Gordon School accommodated infants on the ground floor, boys on the first floor and girls on the second floor. Shortly after its completion, four corrugated iron-clad huts with timber framing were added to the playground to provide additional classroom space. Huts 1 and 2 predate 1916, when they appear on the Ordnance Survey map. Records in the London Metropolitan Archives show that huts were moved to the site in 1916 to provide school places for children from the nearby Well Hall estate, which had been built by the Government for munitions workers from 1915. Although Huts 3 and 4 only appear on the 1949–50 Ordnance Survey map, their construction and plan closely resemble Huts 1 and 2, suggesting they too date to 1916. The London County Council Education Committee minutes record that the huts at Gordon School and at a second nearby school together provided places for an extra 665 children, indicating that more than two huts were erected on the site during the First World War.

The huts were originally arranged in pairs, linked by a corridor at the southern end, but are now connected as a four through extension of this corridor. Huts 1 and 2 have tall sash timber windows, some set in dormers, whilst the others have timber windows positioned below the eaves line. Several huts have had doors inserted into their gabled ends. The interiors are largely open spaces with timber plank-clad walls and metal roof trusses; some have been subdivided to create extra rooms at one end.

Thomas Jerram Bailey's school buildings of the early 20th century were typically very large, often three storeys, with symmetrical compositions incorporating turrets or towers containing staircases and gabled elevations. The Gordon School exemplifies how Bailey's style evolved towards the Baroque idiom in the Edwardian period. The building survives very well with very few alterations and is distinguished by its rich detailing in buff terracotta, including Wrenaissance-influenced round windows and two foundation plaques. Huts 1–4 represent the best surviving examples on the site of a paired arrangement of relatively rare temporary early 20th-century classrooms. Together, the school and huts illustrate the contrast between the architectural exuberance of Edwardian board school design and the early use of functional, flexible structures to accommodate pupils.