Description

TQ 2981 SW CITY OF WESTMINTER MARGARET STREET W1

1900/57/13 No. 84

02-OCT-1969

GV II*

Former Parish School and Church House (now Buddhist Temple). 1868-70, architect William Butterfield, contractor Foster of Whitefriars. Red Fareham bricks, blue, black and white brick, English bond, banding and polychrome diaper work to top storey, Bath stone bands and dressings. Blue Welsh slate roofs with red ridge tiles, set behind stone-coped parapets; tall gabled roof at right, with varied subsidiary gables, central 9 flue chimney with linked octagonal shafts, moulded stone bases, on tall crow-stepped chimney breast. 3 storeys above basement, larger-scale to right of entrance, with taller floors, and top storey treated as attic. Restricted corner site, 60 feet by 70 feet, with front area, and small central courtyard. Former church house to left of main front entrance, which runs beneath the frontage, into the courtyard. School to right, with classrooms stacked vertically, adults in basement, girls and infants on upper ground and first floors, boys on second floor, with secondary entrance around corner on Marylebone Passage.

Late 13th century early Decorated Gothic style. Irregular 5 bay main facade. Off centre, narrow, parapet-gabled 3 storey porch, with narrow projecting buttresses flanking, on ground floor, moulded chamfered stone-arch with dripmould, closed by reset original iron gates and modern glazed timber doors. First floor has narrow coupled sash windows, with horizontal bars, beneath segmental brick header arch. Second floor has two recessed sash windows, with stone head and inner trefoil beneath cusped oval recess housing cross. Diaper work blue and red header spandrel, the whole flanked by tall stone colonettes and moulded stone dripmould. To left of porch, coupled narrow wooden sash windows beneath segmental heads, second floor has arched stone dripmould over left window, and stone parapeted gable above. To right of porch the schoolrooms, with 2 triple windows, basement, upper ground floor and first floors, large triple second floor attic window. Basement windows beneath segmental arches; upper ground and first floor windows have splayed stone ledges, narrow triple sashes separated by tall stone colonettes, supporting chamfered rectangular heads and lintols, with inner moulded trefoil heads. Second floor windows have narrow sashes, in deep reveals below splayed stone heads with inner trefoils, 2 light central window of tall sashes, separated by tall colonettes, outer stone lancet heads inner trefoils, lunette with inner cinquefoil, chamfered stone arched outer surround. Elaborate cross-pattern diaper work above stone band at cill level, and infilling parapeted gabled end and side dormers facing Marylebone Passage. Entrance beneath moulded stone arch with dripmould, porch closed in by modern doors. Rear elevation has flat parapeted roof at left, and gable at right.

INTERIOR: Simply finished, originally plain plaster, and colourwashed brickwork. Second floor classroom has exposed arch-braced tie beam trusses. First floor classroom now decorated as Buddhist shrine. Ground floor classroom with raised end now partitioned off as office. Basement former classroom retains original fireplace, with chamfered wood surround supporting shelf on curved jowls. Original 6 and 8 panel doors to many rooms. Twin leaf framed and battened doors with scrolled iron hinges to entrance from Marylebone Passage.

HISTORY: The school completed the seminal group of buildings in Margaret Street, designed by Butterfield. All Saints Church, opposite, was a landmark both in the Gothic Revival and in Ecclesiology. Its clergy house and choir school, built at the same time, between 1849 and 1853, created a tough urban architecture of brick, with polychrome diaper decoration, and stone banding. The parish school, opened in 1870, cost ?5000, and is in an assertive style, more demonstrative than with the earlier buildings, with which it nevertheless shows an affinity by association, by architect, and group value.

SOURCES:
The Architect, Aug 20, 1870, p.14
The Builder, Nov 4, 1871
Pevsner, N. (rev. Cherry, B) Buildings of England: London 3, p.643
Thompson, P., William Butterfield, pp. 395-401

Listing NGR: TQ2927181428

External Links

• Historic England Listing
• London Fo Guang Shan Temple at Wikipedia
• Wikidata Q2685759

External links are from the relevant listing authority and, where applicable, Wikidata. Wikidata IDs may be related buildings as well as this specific building. If you want to add or update a link, you will need to do so by editing the Wikidata entry.

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