Arts Centre And Music School At Christs Hospital

Arts Centre and Music School at Christ's Hospital, Horsham

Built 1972-1974 to designs by Bill Howell of Howell, Killick, Partridge and Amis, with assistants R J Murphy, N Catton, Di Haigh and R Barton. Structural engineers Harris and Sutherland; theatre consultants Theatre Projects, working closely with the Director of Drama, Duncan Noel-Paton. The design incorporates an earlier band room and practice rooms from 1908 by Aston Webb.

The building comprises a recital room, band room and rehearsal rooms; a theatre with foyer and ancillary spaces; a library; and nine classrooms. Construction uses red Southwater facing bricks with fairfaced Flettons internally painted white, with flat roofs fitted with toplights to the library, recital room and dressing room. Concrete stilts and an exposed floor plate support the recital room. The earlier Aston Webb rooms retain red brick with slate roofs.

The complex plan extends across one and two storeys. The music school is positioned on axis with Christ's Hospital's main buildings, built around the Webb band room and practice rooms. The recital room projects forward on this axis, raised on stilts and accessed via spiral stairs to either side, leaving space beneath for the school band to assemble. Behind stand the band room and music classroom library, with practice rooms arranged symmetrically along flanking corridors—a formal composition that the original building lacked. A transformer station links to an L-shaped wing containing the theatre and classrooms, these forming a three-sided quadrangle to the right of the music school. The theatre, dressing room and scene dock occupy the rear, with the classroom wing to the right; the entrance sits at the corner on the diagonal, with the library above.

The composition is conceived as a series of related and extended octagons. Projecting brick surrounds to downpipes create a contrasting pattern against the interplay of planes around the projecting near-full-height timber windows—fitted with metal opening lights—of the classroom block. These windows were originally dark stained, as survives in the scene dock, though most are now painted white. Stone surrounds frame windows in the earlier building. Doors are thick timber with glazed panels. The detailing throughout is immaculate and of exceptional quality. Wood is extensively used internally: natural finishes in classrooms and recital rooms, stained timber in corridors, library and theatre.

The steel spiral stairs with red timber slat balustrades ascend to a double-height recital room designed for chamber music, featuring a stage and gallery with boarded walls and ceiling. The band room has an open timber roof. The theatre entrance hall contains a central white-painted concrete column with varnished timber ceiling and includes a box office for public performances. A plaque in the entrance commemorates architect Bill Howell (1922-1973). The library above features a slatted timber gallery reached by internal timber stairs, with built-in bookcases and timber ceiling. Timber ceilings also line the corridors.

The theatre was designed for flexibility, capable of adaptation by "boy power" to function either as an end-stage proscenium or as an arena configuration, with seating for 450-580 people. Three one-row deep galleries and a slightly raked pit allow the balconies to continue around the entire auditorium, enabling theatre-in-the-round configuration, though this is rarely used. Timber benches, galleries and ceiling are stained red.

Christ's Hospital houses England's first courtyard theatre. This format anticipates, with greater architectural sophistication, the flexible theatre format later introduced at the Cottesloe Theatre in the National complex (1973) and the Swan Theatre at Stratford-upon-Avon (1986). All three theatres hold similar audience capacities. The design proved significantly innovative and unusually architectural for its time. The late 1960s and early 1970s saw the emergence of the ideal of the flexible black box theatre, interest in "found spaces", and a conscious reaction against the large-budget National Theatre then under construction. Christ's Hospital Theatre marked a first return to an evidently structural aesthetic. Along with the Barbican Theatre, then under construction, Christ's Hospital is unique in its architectural panache and remains successful both for visiting professional companies and schoolchildren. As Director Duncan Noel-Paton wrote in 1994, "its timeless design remains a perfect frame for our extensive programme of educational and professional work."