Former Domestic Science Building In Grounds Of Uphall Primary School

The former domestic science building is located in the grounds of Uphall Primary School in Ilford. Built in 1937 for Essex County Council, it is a single-storey structure designed in the Modern Movement style, featuring in-situ reinforced concrete with a white rendered finish on an industrial black brick plinth. The building has flat projecting roofs, particularly prominent on the upper storey, and a symmetrical pair of chimneys at the rear. The layout is symmetrical, with a central first-floor spine behind a projecting porch and two curved projecting wings at the rear.

The ground floor includes a classroom for cookery and needlework on the left and a flat for girls to practice housewifery on the right. An art room is located on the first floor, which also boasts a large roof terrace with steel railings. The building features steel-framed windows arranged in long horizontal strips that extend onto the side elevations, along with smaller tripartite windows on the sides and curved windows in the projecting wings and first floor. All windows have horizontal steel glazing bars and dark projecting brick sills. A door is concealed behind the porch. The design emphasizes horizontal lines, reinforced by the long windows, dark sills, plinth, projecting roofs, and railings, balanced by the curved projections of the wings.

This building was specifically designed to teach home economics and housewifery to the girls of the adjoining school, reflecting the 1930s belief in the importance of such training for girls to manage their future households. Its architectural style is distinctive for an elementary school of this period and bears resemblance to the work of architects Duiker and Bijvoet, particularly their sanatorium Zonnestraal in the Netherlands.