Former St Georges Institute And Sunday School (Madcap)

Former St George's Institute and Sunday School

This philanthropic institute and Sunday School, now used as an arts centre, was built in 1908 and extended in 1910. The original building was designed by Charles Marriott Oldrid Scott, a leading London architect who worked in his father's practice of J. Oldrid Scott & Son at 8 Dean's Yard, Westminster. The 1910 extension was designed by George Vicars, a draughtsman at Wolverton Carriage Works.

The building is constructed of purple stock brick laid in English bond with red brick dressings, painted wood eaves, and plain red tile roofs. It has a rectangular plan with a wing to the rear right and a stair tower to the rear left.

The principal elevation faces Creed Street and comprises two storeys with part-basement. The façade is of two storeys and ten bays. Slightly raised red brick pilasters mark the corners, end bays, and two-bay divisions across the centre. The main door is located in the left-hand end bay at first floor level, approached by concrete steps with an iron handrail and wrought iron lamp standard to the outer angle of the first-floor landing. It is a double leaf panelled door with a relief plaque above depicting St George with the inscription FOR GOD HIS CHURCH. A ground floor entrance to the third bay from the right has red brick detailing to its surround. Tall timber mullion and transom windows with leaded panes light the ground and first floors. A giant thermae window to the left (south) gable features a four-light mullion and transom window below. A blind thermae window to the north gable is flanked by narrow timber windows. The building has deep eaves.

The first-floor auditorium retains its original proscenium arch to the stage and features a steel and timber truss roof. The green room contains an original chimney piece. Ground floor rooms have been lightly modernised but retain little change to the original layout. Minor late twentieth-century alterations have been made.

The Institute was built during the expansion of Wolverton's railway works. The London and Birmingham Railway (later incorporated into the London and North Western Railway in 1846) established its works here in 1838 at a midway point between London and Birmingham where engines could conveniently be changed. Initially locomotives were manufactured here until 1861, after which carriage building largely took over. By 1886 the works covered 37 acres and employed 2,000 people; by 1907 both figures had more than doubled, maintaining these levels until the early 1960s.

Such institutes multiplied around 1900 as products of philanthropic muscular Christianity, influential between the 1860s and the First World War. The relief of St George above the Institute's front door exemplifies this movement. The building reflects Wolverton's tradition of care for its working population, which characterised the town's entire history. The Institute forms a group with the mid-nineteenth-century St George's Church (listed grade II*) and its former vicarage, now known as The Cedars (listed grade II), yet stands apart from them in its adoption of simpler, pre-Palladian influences, notably evident in the row of first-floor windows.