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Iin 1870 Parliament passed an Act which required all children to attend school from the age of five to thirteen. Uo to this time many ddid not go to school at all, or atteneded now and then when they could be spared from working to help the family income or to look after younger children while their parents worked. Many of those who did attend school went to tiny dame schools in private houses. There they paid a few pence each week to be taught to read and write by unqualified teachers. There were some good schools but they were very expensive and only the rich could afford the fees. The Government was now proposing compulory free education for all boys and girls.
For this they needed to build hundreds of schools as quickly as possible, but where? The first task was to find the sites and then to build. The project was so enormous that it was not until 1884, fourteen years after the Act was passed, that the School Board could explore Islington for sites.
When the London School Board was set up in 1870, if. began to look for sites. This :vas not always easy in the centre of town, as they had to be within walking distance of the pupil's homes. These children would not be able to afford to go to school by bus, as so many do today. There were no cars and everyone walked. It was not until 1883 that they found a suitable site in this part of Islington. Let the School Board minutes take up the story:
Finding the Site
Queen's Head Street School Site
Minutes of the London School Board, December 1883 - May 1884 –
(now held at the London Metropolitan Archive, Nottingham Road, London. Near Sadler's Wells).
Purchase of interest of Clothworkers' Co. Page 345 para 19, 24 January, 1884.
'The Committee recommended that the purchase of the following interest in
Sites on the undermentioned terms:
Owner Interest Price
Finsbury (AK) Freehold 21 houses Nos. l to 35, Queen's Head St £-10,500
Queen's Head St. and 2 houses in Thomas Street -Net rack rental
(Clothworkers’ of houses in Queen's Head St. £472 - Nos. 23
Company] and 25, subject to lease for 3 years at £2, 11s
per annum - Nos. 29, 31 and 33, subject to
[First leases for 2 years are at £3.12 shillings per annum -
interest] Two houses in Thomas Street, subject to leases
for 42 years - Ground rent £4 - net rack rental £65
annum - Nos. 29, 31 anal 33, subject to leases for
2 years at £3,12s, per annum - Two houses in St.
Thomas Street, subject to leases for 42 years -
Ground rent £4 - net rack rental £65,
Surveyor's Fee £ at thattime 71,8s
Total £ 10,571.8s.
This was the preferred local site. Several other sites for different schools in other parts of London follow. They do not concern us here, but indicate how many schools were in the pipeline and how actively the Board was building at that time.
21 Fcbruary, 1884, Page 599 para 1 1
"That a reply be forwarded to the Education Department informing them that the Board are arranging for the purchase of a Site in Queen's Head-street, and that, so soon as a contract for the purchase shall have been signed, the alternative sites proposed to be scheduled in Colebrook row and St. James street (Finsbury AJ and AK) will be abandoned.
28 February, 1884 Page 670 para. 22
A letter sent to the Education Department forwarding a copy of the report of Her Majesty's Inspector said:
I have today inspected the Sites in Colebrook-row and St. James'-street, and the site last submitted in Queen's Head-street, I have also conferred with Dr.Matthews, the first signatory of the memorial against the adoption of the Site in Colebrook-row, Apart from the other considerations of the three sites submitted, I am in favour of the Queen's Head-street site as being the best Site of the three. When the considerations that are not unfairly urged in the Memorial are taken into account, this preference in favour of the Queen's Head-street site is confirmed. Not only is the Site more accessible to the class of children for whom the new School is needed, but also its central position between Angler's Gardens and Hanover Street Board Schools admirably fit it for the purpose.
The Inspector's phrase, `when the considerations that are not unfairly urged', suggests that there had been some special pleading. No doubt particular estate agents, or other interested parties, had pressed their claims rather too strongly, but the decision was clear. Queen's Head Street was thought to be the best site.
The row of houses was part of the Clothworkers Estate in Islington, which had been covered with houses. Most houses in this area were only thirty or forty years old at this time, but this row seems to appear on a map of 1793. If so, they were already 90 years old in 1883 and perhaps a good deal older. This may be why the Clothworkers decided to sell them. There is mention of a ‘hot wall’ in the surveyor’s report, so one of the chimneys have been dangerous and this could have been nother reason to sell.
The Clothworkers' Company, which is a very old livery company of the City of London, owned over sixty acres of land in Islington, just south of Essex Road. The Estate included twenty-three acres, one rood, entrusted to it by Dame Packington in her will dated November 24, 1559, for charitable use. At that time it consisted of fields, but as these were built over, the property became extremely valuable. In the nineteenth century London expanded explosively. Suddenly, land which had grown hay, was being sold at building-plot prices. As a result the Clothworkers became very prosperous.
There were complaints that the Company was using charity money for its own purposes. Instead of increasing the amount spent on charity, the Company continued to pay the same amount as many years before and pocketed the rest. Dickens was vitriolic about many livery companies dining on turtle soup paid for by charity money. An inquiry found that money had been wrongly spent, so from then on the full charity money was allocated to almshouses and education, as Dame Packington had intended.
The Clothworkers' Estate Near Essex Road
This 1793 map by Edward and Benjamin Baker, shows Queen's Head Street. It was then called Queen's Head Lane and its houses were among the oldest in the area.
The 1870 Ordnance Survey map with the houses bought from the Clothworkers' Company shaded in. This was the site of Queen's Head Street School and is now part of Islington Green School site.
USING THE CENSUS
This terrace of houses was to be demolished. Who were the people being cleared out of their homes? How many adults were there and how many children? What were their jobs? How did they earn their livings? Where were they born? How old were they? A writer could build a novel on the material about them which is hidden in the 1881 Census sheets. A pupil could imagine himself or herself to be a child of the same age on the census and tell the story of the move. Exciting? Traumatic? Opening up new opportunities, or destroying a magical past?
In The Growth of Marylebone & Paddington I described the building of Oakington Road, Maida Vale, in 1868 and discovered details of the people who first moved into that terrace. I quote what I wrote there:
| `Of the 194 arrivals from the West Country, 52 (26.81) were Heads of Households. Some wives and children too were born in the west. So were a surprising number of servants and lodgers, who might in their turn settle and bring up families.` |
The area attracted a high proportion of the new arrivals to London from the West Country. They arrived at Paddington on the Great Western Railway, found work in the new shops still being built, and had no reason to penetrate further into London.
THE VIEW FROM DEVON
The other end of the story is told in `Devon', part of the New Survey of England, 1954, published by David and Charles. The author, W.G.Hoskins, says:
| My ancestors were men of no particular eminence even in local history, farmers nearly all of them until the collapse of local communities all over England in the early nineteenth century drove them off the land and into the towns and across the water to the Atlantic continent. But these were the sort of people who were formed the foundations of any stable society'. |
He describes the flight from the country during the nineteenth century. That was the destruction of a country way of life which had lasted for centuries. Here, in Islington, is a town community being uprooted. What is their story? The 1881 census returns can help in this.
THE QUEEN'S HEAD STREET CENSUS RETURNS
The 1881 Census reveals that 133 people of all ages lived in the 18 houses in Queen's Head Street. (We do not know the numbers of the two houses in St. Thomas's Street which were also demolished, so these have been ignored). In one house were two old people in their seventies. Nearby was a rooming house with ten people in five separate households. Another house had two families with eight children between them, all of school age. No two houses were alike.
Of the 133 people in the terrace, 36 were adult males, 44 adult females, and 16 children.
below the age of 21 and working. There were 25 school children and 19 below school age.
Where did they come from? Three quarters of the people, had been born in London. Some Heads of Households had come from outside. Some had married London girls and had families. In contrast to the Paddington census, of the 33 who had been born outside London, only twelve had come from the West Country. Others had come from Birmingham, Kent and the Eastern Counties. This seems to have been a London community. Some may have already been driven out of the City of London by the intensive rebuilding between 1860 and 1880. If so, they were being moved on again.
The variety of their skills illustrates the wealth of small factories in the area. Clerkenwell and Islington, outside the restricting powers of the City of London and their powerful guilds, had a huge variety of small trades, some of them highly skilled. In this short terrace were a locksmith with two apprentices, a cotton spinner, a ring case maker, cardboard box makers, a telegraph engineer, a gold chain maker employing his son and a boy, a watch jeweller, some carpenters, a wire twister, a steel spectacle maker, cabinet makers, an ivory turner and other unusual trades. Some, like the watch jeweller, will have done only one small part in the making of the final objects. Many may have worked at home, in a separate room or even on the kitchen table. The area was full of people who each did their part and passed the batch each day, or each week, to the next specialist. It was a conveyor belt system dotted round neighbouring streets. Besides these craftsmen, there were laundresses, nurse maids, clerks and a bookmaker.
There were also three teachers, two of whom called themselves Board School Teachers, as if to stress that they were trained teachers and not just people who had drifted into Dame School work. This was eleven years since the School Boards were set up and began training teachers. Clearly the London Board was getting a reputation.
QUEEN’S HEAD STREET SCHOOLS
In 1884 the School Board of London built two schools in Queen's Head Street, a ` Graded School' for Boys and Girls up to the age of thirteen, and a smaller Infants School. They were one at each end of along thin site which stretched from Raleigh Street to Rheidon Terrace. Both schools were built close to the northern border, along Queen's Head Street, to leave as much room as possible for playgrounds on the sunnier south side. The whole site was very restricted and this was to affect later building as we shall see. The Infants School survives today as part of a much larger building. The ' Graded School' building later became part of Tudor Secondary School, but was demolished about 1962 to make room for the buildings of the new Islington Green School.
Queens Head Street School for Boys and Girls opened on 25 th January, 1886 and the Infants’ School, at the other end of the site, opened on 21 st. February 1887.
Queens's Head School Street Schools as they were built in 1884.
Queen's Head Street School for Boys and Girls opened on 25th January 1886 and the Infants' School, at the other end of the site, opened on 21 S` February 1887.
QUEEN'S HEAD BOYS AND GIRLS SCHOOLS
North Elevation of the Boys and Girls School Building
The Boys and Girls School (the building at the Rheidol Terrace end of the site) was demolished about 1962, so all we have now are some drawings in the London Metropolitan Archive and the Drain Plans held by Islington Architects Department. It was a two storey building with a pitched roof, a hall facing south west, a long classroom on the south east with tiered seating. This could be divided into three sections by sliding glazed partitions. There were three other classrooms on the north east side.
Drawing No ACl/10, shows a section through two of the roof peaks. The wider room requires extra wooden bracing above, with a king post, a pair of curved diagonal struts and wooden knees. The last have been carved with simple patterns. The rooms are high and neither room has a ceiling.
The Ground Floor classrooms were 18 feet (5.5 metres) high and the Second Floor reached 38 feet (11.6 metres) to the peak. These heights are enormous. The normal ceiling height in modern houses is about 2.6 metres (8 foot 6 inches). Yet theses ceilings are 18 feet and 41 feet up to the ridge of the roof. All this was open space.
Why was it so large? Why did the schools rise so high above the surrounding houses? The schools were only two or three storeys high, yet they dominated four storey houses. The reason was their ceiling height. School ceilings were very much taller than the ceilings of ordinary houses for two good reasons
Drain Plan ISL 359 ABC
THE PROBLEM OF TURNING THE CORNER
DETAILS OF BOTH ENDS OF THE INFANTS SCHOOL CLASSROOM
Diagrams to show how the architect used his precious space
SHADRACKS
Queen's Head Road school, now part Islington Green School, shown earlier, had an unusual arrangement called Shadracks. The Reverend Sidney Smith, the witty nineteenth century clergyman, was happily established at St Paul's Cathedral, but in about 1817 his Bishop decided that he should take over a parish in Yorkshire. Instead of dining at every fashionable table in London and keeping them amused with his witticisms, he would be sent to the other end of the country and act as a clergyman. Sydney Smith went, arriving in style in a four-horse carriage, and built himself a house with big fireplaces.
Fires need a lot of air (oxygen) if they are to burn brightly. The brighter the fire, the more cold air has to rush in through the doors and windows. People huddled near the blaze with their fronts burning and their backs frozen. Smith laid pipes under the floor to bring air from the outside to openings just in front of the fire. The draught of the chimney drew in the air direct and it did not cause draughts in the room. He called them Shasracks after Meshack, Shadrack and Abendigo, the three men in the Bible who walked through the fires unharmed. Perhaps other old schools may have traces of Shadracks.
How every inch of space was used
PAGE 9
QUEEN’S HEAD BOYS AND GIRLS SCHOOLS
North Elevation of the Boys and Girls School Building
The Boys and Girls School (the building at the Rheidol Terrace end of the site) was demolished about 1962, so all we have now are some drawings in the London Metropolitan Archive and the Drain Plans held by Islington Architects Department. It was a two storey building with a pitched roof, a hall facing south west, a long classroom on the south east with tiered seating. This could be divided into three sections by sliding glazed partitions. There were three other classrooms on the north east side.
Drawing No ACI/10, shows a section through two of the roof peaks. The wider room requires extra wooden bracing above, with a king post, a pair of curved diagonal struts and two wooden knees below. (Knees are the curved wooden brackets carved out of natural bends in tree branches).These ones were carved with simple patterns. The rooms are high and neither room has a ceiling.
The Ground Floor classrooms were 18 feet (5.5 metres) high and the Second Floor reached 38 feet (11.6 metres) to the peak. These heights are enormous. The normal ceiling height in modern houses is about 2.6 metres (8 foot 6 inches). Yet theses ceilings are 18 feet and 41 feet up to the ridge of the roof. All this was open space.
Why was it so large? Why did the schools rise so high above the surrounding houses? The schools were only two or three storeys high, yet they dominated four storey houses. The reason was their ceiling height. School ceilings were very much taller than the ceilings of ordinary houses for two good reasons
Queen's Head Street School, c. 19299
The photograph shows that the desks were arranged in tiers and the back windows started above the teacher's head when she was standing on the top tier. Children were not allowed to move about much. The Activity Method, which called for children to move about, conduct experiments, and work in groups, was years in the future. The classroom floors would have to be levelled before that became possible. Instead, the children worked in their desks and classes had to be dismissed in lines to reduce the danger of falling down the steps. So ceilings had to be high because the floors were tiered.
The second, and far more pressing reason for high ceilings was the danger of tuberculosis. Tuberculosis was rife in towns with their pollution and overcrowded houses. It is a very serious disease, affecting mainly the lungs, but it can attack other parts of the body. Almost every family had someone who suffered from the disease, or knew of someone who had died of it. The only known cure was fresh air. A long. slow process of recovery in a mountain resort in Switzerland was the best, but how many could afford that? People had to live where the work was, despite their bad living conditions.
THE GRAPH OF DEATHS FROM TUBERCULOSIS
The Graph of Deaths from Tuberculosis
In 1840 there were 4000 deaths per million each year from tuberculosis. Slowly better living conditions had reduced this but, when the tuberculosis bacteria was identified, in the 1880s, there were. still 2000 deaths per million. This was when Queen's Head Street School was opened. The death rate had been halved but the death rate does not tell the whole story. TB makes it difficult for the patient to earn a living. There are long periods of sickness at home, or in hospital. Patients had to be supported by their relations. There was no free health service and no unemployment pay, so one tuberculosis victim could bring distress to the whole family. This was years before the modern drugs which are available today. Paddington Children's Hospital was famous for its care and devotion to children, but the doctors' powers were limited. In 1914, at the start of the First World War, the list of medicines available to treat patients consisted of: Bromide of Potassium, Carbonate of Bismuth, Cod liver oil, Glycerine, and Quinine. They treated Vitamin deficiency diseases with oranges, when the parents could afford them, or with soup made with potato peelings. This was good science, but n its early stages. No others medicines are mentioned in their files.
No wonder children needed fresh air and why it played such a large, part in the conscious planning for child health. In one school in Muswell Hill, where there is fresh air direct from the Urals, there was an wooden, out-door classroom. It had open spaces instead of a door and windows and the older children worked out there even with snowflakes drifting in."
" The Growth of Muswell Hill, by Jack Whitehead, pp.25, 227-231
OPEN AIR SCHOOLS
'The London County Council developed school sites on the outskirts of London, in, for example, Muswell Hill,Shooters Hill and other places where the winds blew free. Classes visited them one day a week by coach to work in open air classrooms, botanise and play games. In town, some schools had open-air classrooms in the playground, or rather gritty desks in the open, where children could do their lessons in good weather. This emphasis on fresh air and physical exercise which would ensure deep breathing, was the main defence against Tuberculosis.
The Chairman of The School Board for London in 1884 said:-
'At the instance of the Chairman of the Works Committee, whose connection with measures for arresting disease in London is well known, special attention has been paid to the. sanitary condition of our schools, and it may be safely said that this is now as well considered and as complete as in a first rate hospital. At a time wizen dangerous epidemics threaten the metropolis, I feel that this will be satisfactory to the public mind. In some of our schools considerations of expense and contracted sites have compelled its to provide playgrounds on the roof. It is worthy of note that the winning school in the drill competition this year as confined to ran airy but confined space of this kind.'
It was to be another twenty-six years before Queen's s Head School was lucky enough to get one.
Classes too were very large. Sixty children in one classroom could rapidly infect each other, so each child needed plenty of fresh air which was changed regularly. Therefore schools were built with big classrooms and very high ceilings. There were windows on both sides of the classroom, to change the air continually. Medical Officers of Health were perpetually writing about the 'Cross Draught Theory' The fight against tuberculosis was long and slow. Pasteur discovered that heating milk above 70° C killed the tuberculosis bacteria. Eventually milk had to be Pasteurised by law and one of the main sources of infection was controlled. By the end of World War 11, in 1945, the death rate from tuberculosis; was down to 500 per million, one eighth of the 1840 figure. This had been achieved by better nourishment, better housing, pasteurisation, and very high classroom ceilings must also have played some part. Only at this stage was a drug cure found.
By 1950 Streptomycin was widely available and, when BCG vaccination was introduced, the illness was practically eliminated in the west. At last there was a specific cure for tuberculosis and the isolation hospitals, which had housed thousands of sufferers were being closed. Classroom ceilings could be lowered. Compare the ceiling heights of the present 1910 building and the new 1964 ones.
There is a third factor often forgotten in our western world where most people have bathrooms and adequate washing facilities. Many of these children would not have had running water in the house and very few indeed would have had running hot water, so the class rooms could have become very smelly. Another reason for plenty of fresh air.
Thus Tuberculosis, other infectious diseases, coal fires in each classroom and general ventilation, all affected the design of schools in 1884.
4
ENLARGING THE BOYS AND GIRLS SCHOOL IN 1892
Accommodation Present Additional Total
Boys 340 120 460
Girls 340 120 460
Infants 320 320
Totals 1000 240 1240
THE ENLARGEMENT OF BOTH BUILDINGS IN 1892
CHANGING TRENDS IN SCHOOL DESIGN
Earlier schools had used the Pupil Teacher System. In this the teacher was assisted by pupils who hoped to qualify later as teachers. They were little older than the oldest children but were responsible for small groups. Their own education continued and the teacher taught them for part of the week, but most of their time was spent supervising younger pupils in sections of a very large classroom. As these
Pupil Teachers became qualified, they could have class rooms of their own and this meant changing the school layout. The 1884 London School Board Chairman again:
'The tendency towards the employment of adults in substitution for pupil teachers also requires some modification of the planning. A certain number of square -classrooms, accommodating a larger number than were entrusted to a pupil teacher, are therefore a feature of our newer schools. A better concentration of the class is thus secured, and left hand lighting for the room is rendered more generally possible.'
Thus at this period we find square classrooms, cross ventilated, lit from the left since most people are right handed, and, where possible, with the classrooms leading directly off a large, sunny hall which faced south.
At Queen's Head Street the long classroom was divided into three permanent rooms, instead of by mere sliding partitions, but there were still interconnecting doors between the rooms.
The 1894-96 Ordnance Survey map shows the two school buildings with the Infants School also enlarged. The St. James St. end of the block is lined with houses and behind- their gardens were industrial buildings with entrances from St. James St. and Rheidol Terrace. These were the Builder's Yard which will be discussed later. The Infants School had been enlarged, but still had pitched roofs.
Drawing 1SL 359A, dated 1892, shows the 1884 work in white and the 1892 extension work in black. The extension had a gabled roof identical to those at either end of the 1884 building, but the window arrangement was different. The windows at the other end of the building were blocked in at the same time as part of the redesign of the long classroom. Small windows have been left, presumably these gave cross-draught ventilation. The new brickwork appears as black, as does some new work at the roof level.
THE HEATING SYSTEM
When the school was built in 1883-4, each room had a coal fire with its own chimney. Every fire had to be cleared out each day and the ashes removed, the fire re-laid and lit, before the classes arrived. Teachers put on extra coal during the day and the smoke from all these chimneys would have spread over Islington, producing pea-souper fogs.
It is quite amusing that many modern children, brought up in centrally heated houses, have no idea what a chimney does. They draw houses in the traditional way - a square box with a door and windows, a pitched roof with a chimney belching smoke. But in the children's minds there is nothing under the chimney on the roof. It does not connect to anything. The chimney has become a sort of appendix to the house: a folk memory of a functioning chimney as the human appendix is a relic of an earlier digestive system.
ENLARGING THE NURSERY SCHOOL BUILDING IN 1910
The School had to be enlarged again in 1910 but the site was still very small. There was no way to go but upwards. The steeply pitched roof wasremoved and replaced with a flat roof, This provided two roof-top playgrounds, new lavatories and two covered ‘Marching Spaces’. The marching spaces were for openair exercise even in wet weather, exctly as the School Board Chairman had described years before.
The School building is in yellow London Stock bricks with red brick surrounds to the windows. The windows are large, with small glass panes and centre pivoting panels at the top. The root' playground is surrounded by a high wall with large openings all round. These have arched tops in red brick and are filled with substantial wrought iron panels. This ironwork is typical of the period. Similar wrought iron can be seen, for example, in Maida Vale, which was built about. 1900, and in many other London Board schools of the time.
BUILDING FIREPROOF FLOORS
Building the flat roof also allowed the architect to improve the school by insralling fireproof floors. The original wooden floors were repalced by steel girders and concrete. From below the new floors an e seen to consist of steel girdes with concrete floors above. This steel construction was strong enough to give wide spans, while the lack of hollow ceilings meant that everything was exposed. There could be no plae for vermin to hide.
THE PLAN OF THE FLOOR GIRDERS
The small girders have been incorporated in the concrete floor, but the large ones
can still be seen from below.
The architect also installed hot-water radiate°s fired by one boiler instead of the separate fires. Queens Head Street slopes downhill with the original Nursery School at the higher end. Therefore the boiler house was built at the lower end where less excavation would be necessary. There are still slight traces of where the old fireplaces used to be and the chimneys are still lurking in the walls.
The school building is in yellow London Stock bricks with red brick surrounds to the windows. These are large, with small glass panes and centre-pivoting panels at the top. The roof playground is surrounded by a high wall with latge openings all round, These have arched tops in red brick and are filled with substantial wrought iron panels. The ironwork is typical of the period. Similar wrought iron can be seen in, for example, Maoda Vale, which was built about 1900, and in many other London Board Schools of the time.
THE NEW ROOF-TOP MARCHING SPACE
A Wrought Iron Safety Grille
with an elaborate
cut-brick lintel above.
At one corner of the roof is a square turret, with a tiled roof and a weather vane on a typical Arts and Crafts style pillar. It’s a battered shape, slightly smaller at the top than the bottom and composed of tapered uprights, and could be the design for a
THE BOMBING MAP
During the Second World War the streets round Queen's Head Street School were heavily bombed. The pictures of Packington Street and Prebond Street show the gravity of the attacks. The curved piece of corrugated iron, thrown aside by the blast like an empty sweet wrapper, was an Anderson Shelter. Dug a few feet into the ground and covered with earth, they seemed to offer protection. No doubt it was full of people taking refuge from the planes, but it proved a paltry defence.
The local Air Raid Wardens kept a record of each incident, noting the date, the type of bomb and its location. These were marked on a series of maps which were later used to make a detailed map of all London bomb damage. A small part of it is reproduced here. `° Recently an architect consulted this map, about another part of London, when he was asked to rebuild a post-war house which had started to subside. The contractors were already five metres down and still bringing up complete window frames. Clearly the site had been a huge bomb crater, used later to dump bomb debris. Levelled and forgotten, it was marked on the map, ready to be the centre of a court case.
PART OF ISLINGTON ON THE BOMBING MAP
++ADD LINK TO COPYRIGHT
Page 23
BOMBING NEAR THE SCHOOL
The corner of Packington Street and Prebend Street, with Nos. 126-129 and Nos. 41-45 demolished. The resulting gap can be seen on the 1953 Ordnance Survey map.
The rear of Prebend St. houses, with the houses cut wide open and an Anderson Shelter made of curved corrugated iron, blown aside, like paper.
Page24
Each Borough recorded its findings in its own way. Some used large ledgers; some a series of street cards, some individual pieces of paper. They can be consulted in most Borough Archives, but not in Camden. There, in a piece of mindless stupidity, the records were destroyed as a protest against War. People who had been killed were then obliterated from the record in a piece of gesture politics.
Some of the cards used by Islington are reproduced here.
Some typical Street Incident Cards
Queen's Head Street had six recorded incidents on this card, one in the School Yard itself. They were all H.E. (high explosive). Other roads record I.B.s (incendiary bombs, land mines and later, V 1 flying bombs and V2 rockets. The whole led// over years of bombing, to derelict bomb sites full of weeds, to be left in some cases for years before the sites could be rebuilt.
PAGE 25
The completely obliterated Windsor Street/Britannia Row block.
The Bombing map had been completed by about 1946 and shows large areas of damage north of the school. The 1953 Ordnance Survey has not bothered to change the earlier map, except to blank out the demolished corner of Packington Street. No doubt the plans for the new, enlarged school were already blocked in. Some of the patched houses were still occupied, but there was no point in the surveyors remeasuring houses which were soon to be demolished.
Notice that the school site had been enlarged to take over the Builder's Yard and a new entrance cut through into Chantry Street.
A NEW SCHOOL AT LAST
There had many changes in the use of the school buildings between 1910 and 1945. The old Infants School Building, enlarged in 1910, had become part of the post-war Tudor Secondary School. During the Second World War some properties had been damaged and some patched up. We do not know how badly the Graded School building at the other end of the playground had fared. It is not marked as badly damaged on the Bombing Map.
Tudor School was on several scattered sites, waiting for new buildings to be ready. When the new Tudor Secondary School, now Islington Green, was announced In 1964, they were impatient to move.
The local newspaper announced the new school as follows:-.
Building Tudor Secondary School
Extract from North London Press, 11 September, 1964
Work on the erection of Islington Green Secondary School, built at a total cost of £595,000 is rapidly nearing completion. The school, which will accommodate 1,200 boys and girls, aged from 11 to 19 years, occupies a site at the junction of Packington and Prebend Street, Islington. The staff and pupils at the nearby Tudor Secondary School, including those housed in buildings in Ritchie Street and Shepperton Road, hope to move into the main, six storey teaching block towards the end of October. The children in each of the six houses will have their own assembly and dining hall. Two gymnasia and a spacious games hall have also been provided, in addition to an engineering and science section, The existing Tudor School is to be remodelled to provide a fully-equipped technical section with workshops, machine shops and drawing offices. Tudor's headmaster, Mr. C.A.Noseworthy, has been appointed head of the new school.
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THE CONSTRUCTION OF THE NEW BUILDING
The new building was in reinforced concrete. This involved hundreds of drawings showing every detail of the construction - where to put the steel reinforcement bars, their sizes, the concrete thicknesses and mixtures, etc. All this is far too complicated to go into here. One detail has been printed as an example of the care needed if reinforced concrete is to be strong, as light as possible and yet not crack and allow water to penetrate. If tiny cracks appear in the surface concrete, water can penetrate and rust the steel bars. When steel rusts, it expands with great force, splitting the outer concrete apart. Then more water penetrates and the rusting gets worse. Keeping the outside concrete cover thick enough to prevent water penetration, without making the whole structure too heavy, is a skilled process.
The quality of the drawing shows how pressed the architects were for time. Everything was a rush. At the end of the 1945 War London needed rebuilding. Houses, schools, hospitals. Everything. There was no time for fancy lettering. Quick, hand-written notes had to serve. Unreadable at this reduction, they were quick and serviceable. A Victorian architect would have been appalled, but he would not have been rebuilding after a major Blitz.
Today, the drawing would be made on a computer and the lettering typed into the computer
quick and at the same time clear. Unfortunately, architectural computers were fifty years in the future.
DETAIL OF THE REINFORCED CONCRETE ROOF The Assembly Hall roof was corrugated, giving it strength for little weight. This detail was repeated time and again along the length.
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The Sixth Form Extension
In 1971 a Sixth Form Extension was built on about half the area of the old 1910 'Marching Space'. The drawings show that four of the grilled openings in the parapet wall were replaced by timber-framed windows and the new building was faced with aluminium. Thus on the same roof space we have the old staircase with its Arts and Crafts roof, and the new building with huge float glass windows and aluminium cladding. The last two materials were not available to architects in 1910.
Aluminium would have been fiendishly expensive if it could have been obtained at all. It was developed after the First World War, mainly as a specialist material for the aircraft industry and did not become generally available as a building material until well after the Second World War. The float glass process was developed by Pilkingtons in the 1950s. Before that large sheets of glass were confined to shop windows and other special uses as they had to be cast and then polished, a slow and unhealthy process. This made plate glass very expensive indeed. School windows and the windows of ordinary houses, were made of plain glass, full of ripples and distortions and divided into small panes for cheapness and easy maintenance.
Thus the 1892 school roof and the 1971 sixth form extension, are interesting examples of different architects working with the materials which were available in their times and which could be afforded. It does not always work one way. Terra-cotta, affordable in 1892, would have been prohibitively expensive in 1971. Plate glass and aluminium were unobtainable at any price in say 1910. It s details like this that help us to `read` buildings.