Hamilton House Community Centre, Hamilton Road, Bangor, Co Down, BT20 4LF

Hamilton House Community Centre, Hamilton Road, Bangor

Hamilton House is a single-storey prefabricated lightweight structure designed by architect J. A. Gaw and dated 1949. It was built as an annexe to the Technical School housed in the nearby Carnegie Library, and was the first aluminium school in Northern Ireland. The building originally served as an education facility and is now in use as a community centre. It sits on a wedge-shaped site close to Bangor town centre at the junction of Hamilton Road and Park Road, within the Bangor Central Area of Townscape Character.

The building's primary architectural interest lies in its structural system and its expressive use of aluminium as a building material, most clearly seen in the projecting fins along the south façade of the principal block. It also carries considerable historical interest as part of a wider post-war programme of school construction across the United Kingdom, during which surplus manufacturing capacity in the aircraft industry was redirected into innovative prefabricated building technologies. Short Brothers and Harland Ltd are understood to have manufactured the Bangor building, and are recorded as having built at least 29 aluminium schools in Northern Ireland between 1949 and 1954.

The complex comprises multiple rectangular units arranged around a small central yard. The principal block — the former classroom range — faces south and presents a curtain wall façade divided by projecting fins that support an overhanging roof. Each bay of this façade rises from the ground as follows: corrugated metal cladding at low level; timber over-cladding above; then horizontal split bi-partite windows extending up to the eaves soffit. Several plain flush timber escape doors are positioned at intervals along this elevation. The left gable of the principal block is blank. The rear elevation is finished flush and incorporates a mix of glazed and corrugated cladding sections. The right gable has a large central glazed section. Adjoining the principal unit at the rear are two smaller individual units of matching detail, along with a single-storey flat-roofed service block and principal entrance, which is considered of no interest.

Construction throughout is of corrugated aluminium cladding fixed to a steel structure rising from a concrete plinth, with grey bricks laid in stretcher bond. The roof is shallow-pitched with a felt covering, overhanging and flush eaves, and extruded aluminium rainwater goods comprising box guttering with circular downpipes. Windows are single-glazed with steel frames and are of pivot and casement type. Principal doors are generally plain timber with a narrow glazed panel and stainless steel ironmongery.

To the west of the principal block stands a secondary building: a double-height hall matching the principal building in style and detailing. Its principal south-facing gable is abutted by a single-storey flat-roofed entrance lobby with centrally placed double timber doors and continuous high-level glazing to the front and both side cheeks. Both the left and right elevations of the hall feature continuous high-level glazing with a single exit door positioned right of centre at ground level. The north-facing gable is abutted by a flat-roofed L-shaped brick ancillary block, which is considered of no interest. Later flat-roofed brick additions, erected around 1970, are also present on the site.

The site slopes down to the north. Access from Hamilton Road is through modern palisade gates, with a pedestrian ramp also from Hamilton Road to the south of the hall. There is a narrow strip of grass with trees along the southern edge of the site, and grassed areas to the east and north bounded by low hedges. To the west are three-storey Victorian terraces in mixed commercial and retail use. To the north is a two-storey Victorian terrace and detached residential buildings.

Hamilton House first appears in valuation records in 1949 as a "new aluminium school" occupied by the Bangor Borough Education Committee, and later town plans caption it "Technical School (Hamilton House)". A plaque inside the building records that it was opened on Monday 16 May 1949 by the Ministry of Education, and was named Hamilton Hall in recognition of the services to technical education of Thomas D. Hamilton Esq. JP, who had served as chairman of the Bangor Technical Instruction Committee for thirty years. Contemporary newspaper reports described it as the "First Aluminium School in Northern Ireland".

The First General Revaluation records that the school was valued at £105 and was erected at a total outlay approaching £10,000, nearly half of which was consumed by the expense of preparing what was described as a poor site. It originally contained three classrooms accommodating 72 pupils, along with cloakrooms and sanitary facilities. The ground was owned by the Council (Gas Committee) at a site rent of £50 per annum. By 1954, further classroom accommodation had been added and the valuation was raised substantially to £200.

The first aluminium school in Britain had opened in Bristol in March 1949, just weeks before the Bangor building. The Bristol school was likely manufactured by the Bristol Aeroplane Company, which had redirected its surplus wartime capacity into aluminium prefabrication. The Bangor school closely followed its predecessor and imitated the characteristic projecting fins supporting a roof extension. Short Brothers, operating on a similar principle, appear to have manufactured the Bangor building. Post-war Northern Ireland saw an extensive school-building programme initiated by the Education Act of 1947, with budgets rising from half a million pounds in 1949 to three and a half million pounds in 1954. By 1954, approximately 40% of school construction work in progress was of prefabricated type, though some 90% of work scheduled to begin that year was to revert to traditional construction. Prefabricated schools fell out of favour after only a few years, largely because they proved no cheaper to build than conventional structures. Among the larger aluminium school projects attributed to Short Brothers and Harland Ltd was Ashfield School on the Holywood Road — boys' and girls' schools built between 1951 and 1953, now demolished, completed for a total of £489,000.