William Patten School drawings in Date Order
Still Lots to sort out
++The next piece on the History of the building will use some of your corrected drawings, so please do not tackle it at the moment.
The Drawings of the original School Building.
The original London School Board drawings of Church Street School passed to the London County Council about 1900 and were stored at County Hall. They were held there in the Lower Basement, where the sharks now swim in the aquarium. There was a mass of architects’ plan chests which stretched as far as the eye could see. These chests contained the drawings of schools, blocks of L. C. C. flats, community halls, power stations, etc. Everything was there and the foreman in charge could look at his little black book and say, “Chest P13 – bottom drawer, over in the far right hand corner”. Sure enough, there it was.
When Mrs Thatcher destroyed the L. C. C., all itse buildings passed to the London Boroughs and the drawings were bundled off without thought to local Town Halls, which had nowhere to put them. The mass of plan chests were bulky and needed a lot of clean dry storage. In most cases this was simply not available. The whole thing was comparable to sacking the Library at Alexandria. I have found beautiful Lutyens drawings in an abandoned factory space, with water dripping relentlessly through the roof.
Boroughs did what they could. Hackney made careful micro-fiches of the drawings, which are now stored it the Local History Archive. These are transparencies about 50 cms wide, which give some idea of the original drawings but have lost a great deal of detail. Many fine lines no longer exist. No doubt the original were then put in a skip. Reconstructing the drawings from the microfiches has been a long and tedious job but they are still only pale imitations of the originals. Very sad.
The Site of Church Street School when it opened in 1892
++saved W Patt floor plan 1892
The original drawing was made in 1894 when the school was enlarged, so the enlargement details, which we will see later, have been removed to show only the position in 1892
Ground Floor Plan 1892
++Saved W Patt ground floor plan small
++CHANGE THESE PLEASE IN DRAWING ABOVE
Saved as School Board label
REPLACE THIS TITLE IN ALL DRAWINGS PLEASE
*****
Girls and Infants Playground
Girls and Infants Covered Playground
Boys Playground
Basement Plan
Boys Covered Playground
PLEASE REPLACE THESE COVERED PLAYGROUNDS IN THE No 2 DRAWING OF THE SITE CALLED ground floor plan 1892
Cookery Centre 1892
Then reduce these and add please.
Cookery Class Room
(next word unreadable so leave it out)
Scullery
Cloaks
Girls and Infants Covered Playground
++revolve 90 degrees clockwise
++Shape too thin
++turn through 90 degrees and lay the words on the covered playground shape.
Boys Covered Playground
The Church Street School Site plan made in 1894 for the Expansion.
This shows the building before the Cookery Department had been moved into the new Extension, the Infants and Girls Covered Playground moved to the West wall and the new Three-storey Extension built.
++change cookery centre and covered playgrounds and the other labels as before.
The drawing of the new basement and its furnace shows that the School was to be heated by hot water radiators instead of coal fires.
++ADD Basement Plan and if you can , Furnace in the basement
Ground Floor Plan
Saved W Patt ground floor plan small
or plan of School Expansion in June 1890 INCLUDING FUTURE EXPANSION PLAN
saved W patt expansion
1 st Fl plan
1st Floor plan of School Expansion in June 1890
++SAVED W Ratt Floor Pla 1890
The BLACK walls were the existing walls and the expansion
++colour in the extension plans in all the floors?
++2 Replaces these words
Mezzanine
over
Ground Floor
Class Room
Second Floor Plan 1890
Saved 2nd Fl plan landscape
PLEASE REPLACE THESE WORDS
Hall
Mezzanine
over
First Floor
Class Room
Third Floor Plan 1890
(Girls Playground etc,)
Saved 3 rd Fl plan 1890 A4 and dragged in
Replace please
Mezzanine
over
Second Floor
First Room
KEITH THIS DRAWING
William Patten Third Floor Plan showing the Girl’s Rooftop Playground, 1890
SAVED Saved W Patt 3 rd floor plan small
Girls Rooftop
Playground
Covered Playground
Girls Mistresses Room
Drawing Class Room
The Roof Top Playground
Why should the school have had a roof-top playground? The answer would have come from the local Medical Officer of Health. The Victoria County History says:-
‘In the south part of Stoke Newington (south of Church Street) the death rate was 10.2 per 1000, compared with 8.3 per 1000 in the north, and many died of tuberculosis, bronchitis, and similar diseases. By 1897there were 5,600 houses in Stoke Newington and the death rate had had risen to 16.7 per 1000 in the south. The increased death rate and poverty was also occasioned by a higher birth rate.’
Stoke Newington vestry M.O.H. report 1897-8
Church Street School had been opened in 1892. There would be no cure for tuberculosis for another 60 years, when Streptomycin was discovered. Then the tuberculosis sanitariums all over the country could be closed. Until that time the only known cure for this killer disease was fresh, clean air. London air was polluted with coal smoke and fumes from industry, which had spread up Stoke Newington High Street and was starting to spread sideways into the rest of the borough.
Children were taught to breathe deeply and carry out marching exercises, in the hope of defeating the disease by making them breathe deeply and take exercise. This is why the London County Council added flat roofs to its schools all over London. They also started Open Air Schools on the fringes, in Muswell Hill and other high areas where the air came straight from the Urals. Classes were bussed out on one day each week, to play football and have lessons in the clean air. There was no other way to save lives.
++There are detail drawings and new titling to be added to them. Please replace these two covered playgrounds in the
Girls and Infants Covered Playground
Cookery Centre
Then reduce these and add please.
Cookery Class Room
(next word unreadable so leave it out please)
Scullery
Cloaks
The originalcovered playground The New Two-storey Cookery Centre added in 1890
The New Cookery Centre.
over the country could be closed. Until then the only known cure was fresh, clean air. London was polluted
William Patten School Roof plan 1890
The Enlargement of the School Building in 1894
North Elevation of the Building after the 1890 Extension
Saved North Elevation
South Elevation of the 1890 Extension to William Patten School
++Saved W Patt S Elev Extension 1980 landscape
West Elevation of the 1890 Extension
++W Patt extension w elev landscape 1890
Sections AA & BB of the 1890 building
Please change title to
Sections on AA & BB
The Enlargement in 1894
Elevation drawings of the William Patten Extension in 1894
++Saved W Patt extension elev landscape
Sections AA BB of the William Patten Building in 1890
++Saved W Patt Sections AA BB A4 but Reduced and dragged in
++colour in all these extensions and remove the pencil ovals round the titles
There are A4 copies which can be put into an advanced section of the maps.
Sections CC DD of William Patten School in 1890
++Reduced from A4 version
Notice all the chimneys. Each classroom had a fireplace and the caretaker had to clear out the fires every night and relay them for the next morning. He lit them every morning and the teachers piled on more coal all day. All these chimneys poured out smoke and soot. No wonder everyone found it difficult to breathe.
Notice that there more and more chimneys as you go up. This was one of the reason why coal-fired houses could not go higher then about five storeys. The second was that this was as high as anyone could be expected to carry buckets of coal.
Fireproof Floors
Fireproof Floors put in in 1890
++Saved w patt fireproof floors small
Detail of the fireproof floors showing the steel girders resting on new corbels in the wall and the concrete slabs above.
Concrete slabs
Steel girder
Corbel
++PUT THESE IN LEVEL WITH THE FLOOR ABOVE PLEASE