Christchurch Primary School

Christchurch Primary School comprises a group of early 20th-century school buildings constructed in a striking polychromatic style influenced by Dutch and Flemish Renaissance architecture. The buildings are built of London stock brick with bands and dressings of glazed yellow brick and terracotta, plinths of blue engineering brick, and roofs of Welsh slate. The architectural treatment strongly recalls the contemporary work of T J Bailey for the School Board for London. Unifying features across the complex include boldly striped brickwork, round-headed windows, and extravagantly shaped gables on the upper floors (the lower floors are of stock brick with plainer segment-headed windows). The stair-towers receive distinctive treatment, with rows of small mullioned windows and terracotta-faced parapets dipped in the centre.

Layout and Site

The school occupies a large rectangular island site bounded by Melbourne, Balfour, Christchurch and Wellesley Roads. The two principal buildings are the elementary school (opened 1900) at the north-east corner of the site, and the higher grade school (opened 1901) on the south-west boundary facing Melbourne Road. Two smaller buildings complete the group: the secondary school annexe (opened 1906), positioned end-on to the eastern Balfour Street boundary, and the caretaker's house facing north-west onto Wellesley Road. The site is surrounded by walls and railings, with gates and gate-piers at various points.

Elementary School

This is a tall, three-storey building on a deep E-plan. The most formal elevation is the north-west front to Wellesley Road, which is of five bays, each with three windows and each surmounted by a big shaped gable. The outer bays project slightly and have scrolls, oculi and pointed finials. Sharply projecting cornices divide the storeys, and the pitched roof is crowned by a lead-covered timber cupola and a series of tall banded chimneys.

The south-east elevation has projecting outer wings formed by the stair-towers and their attached cloakroom blocks. The entrance doorways here have moulded lettering in their semicircular tympana, with those leading to the boys' school on the second floor raised atop short flights of half-moon steps. The middle block, set well back between these wings, contains the assembly halls and has a polygonal central bay rising through all three storeys. (The single-storey staffroom block in front is an addition.) On the south-west return elevation is a marble plaque dated 1899, giving the names of the School Board members and those of the architect and builder.

The interiors are typically spartan. Each floor was in effect a separate school: infants on the ground floor, girls on the first and boys on the second. Each school comprises a large assembly hall with classrooms along one side and short corridors at either end leading to further classrooms, cloakrooms, washrooms and stairwells—an arrangement reflecting the 'Prussian system' adopted by the School Board for London during the previous decade. The halls have wood-block floors and exposed ceiling girders. The classrooms have glazed timber doors with overlights to the hall and corridors, as well as narrow interconnecting doors. There are tiled dados throughout, now painted over. Above the cloakrooms are mezzanine floors containing head teachers' offices, each with a small triangular oriel window overlooking the corridor below.

Higher Grade School

This is another big three-storey building, similar in style and scale to the elementary school, but somewhat more grandiose in overall effect as befits its senior status. The main elevation is to the south-west, facing Melbourne Road. Here again the outer bays project, and have hipped roofs with big gabled half-dormers; early photographs show these with semicircular Diocletian windows, since enlarged. The middle five bays are given a giant arcade encompassing the ground and first floors, the dividing piers canted and topped with big terracotta scrolls. Above is a deep cornice, and above that a low attic storey with (inserted) rectangular windows surmounted by a hipped roof with three dormers; their crowning pediments have been removed, as has the cupola atop the roof-ridge.

On either side are lower two-storey wings with flat-roofed single-storey porches in front. That to the right contains the boys' entrance, but the girls' entrance to the left has been rebuilt. The playground (north-east) elevation resembles that of the elementary school, but with the stair-towers set back rather than forward, and with tall triangular half-dormers bearing strapwork decoration rising from the second floor. The centre block again has a polygonal middle bay, here marking the head teachers' offices (this has been raised by an extra storey). In the roof above is a big dormer bearing the date 1900. Two stone plaques on the return elevations record that the Higher Grade School—'the first to be erected in the county'—was 'promoted' by the Ilford School Board between 1896 and 1899, and opened by the Bishop of Barking on 22 June 1901.

The plan repeats that of the elementary school on the ground and first floors (the boys' and girls' schools respectively), with classrooms and corridors flanking large assembly halls, and stairs, cloakrooms and washrooms in the outer wings. The second floor originally contained more specialist facilities: classrooms for drawing and physics, a lecture room and, in the (now altered) central part above the halls, a large chemistry laboratory. The interiors and their fittings likewise closely resemble those of the elementary school.

Secondary School Annexe

This is a two-storey building, visually subordinate to the adjacent Higher Grade School, but with a similar external treatment: shaped gables and big round-headed windows on the upper floor, stock brick and segmental windows below. The north-east front has an odd, slightly asymmetrical pattern of fenestration, with three irregularly-spaced half-dormers breaking through the eaves line; the original tall banded chimney-stacks have been truncated. The south-west front is more regular, with a pair of gables flanked by low stair-towers. The main entrance (now blocked) with its heavy keystone surround is off-centre to the right. The east return faces the street and has a side entrance and a stone plaque that commemorates the building's opening in August 1906.

The internal plan is simple. On the ground floor there are three classrooms connected by a longitudinal corridor which also gives access to the stairwells. The upper floor repeats the same arrangement but with a single large classroom (once the cookery room) in the centre part.

Caretaker's House

This, the smallest of the four buildings, originally served a dual function, containing both living accommodation for the resident caretaker and, on the second floor, a cookery classroom. Access to the domestic quarters was from Wellesley Street, where the building is set back within a small garden. On this elevation, the near-symmetry of the three-storey right-hand part with its big central half-dormer is disrupted by the placement of the stacks, the slightly off-centre front door and the short set-back wing to the left. On the playground side is a projecting two-storey porch-cum-stair-tower, by which the pupils gained access to the cookery room.

The building was flanked by two single-storey brick sheds, originally open play shelters. The right-hand (north-east) one survives intact and is included in the listing, but the other has been rebuilt as classrooms within its old outer wall, and is excluded. (A further shed, now roofless and also excluded from the listing, can be seen in the north-east corner of the playground.)

This building's interiors were not inspected. Originally they comprised kitchen, parlour and scullery on the ground and first floors, connected by a separate newel stair, with the cookery classroom on the floor above.

Subsidiary Features

High brick walls alternate with spiked railings around the periphery of the site, punctuated at certain points by square brick gate-piers with domed terracotta tops inscribed, variously, BOYS, GIRLS and INFANTS.