Riversdale School with Associated Caretaker's House, Boundary Wall and Iron Gates, Southfields, London

Description

WANDSWORTH

1207/0/10163 MERTON ROAD
11-DEC-09 Riversdale School with associated care
taker's house, boundary wall and iron
gates

Also Known As: Caretaker's house to Riversdale School, 302B, MERTON ROAD
Board school, designed by TJ Bailey for the School Board for London, 1890-1, extended 1902. C21 single-storey dining hall range not of special interest.

EXTERIOR: Riversdale School is a Queen-Anne style, three-storey plus basement, yellow stock brick building with red brick gable ends and red brick and stone dressings, timber, mainly sash, windows and pitched and gambrel tiled roofs. The principal elevation is to the east along Merton Road and is of three parts: left-hand end with Dutch gable and windows in triplets with tall central window; left of centre a straight-headed gable with a bell-cupola corbelled out from the apex, tall central window under an ogee hood-mould with raised brick quasi-palmette decoration in the tympanum and an off-centre balustraded projection beneath; on the right a small shaped gable pierces the eaves in the centre of a gambrel roof, the windows in triplets, tall central window under a square hood-mould. This frontage has some characterful details, including a raised brick cartouche in the left-hand gable displaying entwined letters 'LSB' (London Schools Board) beneath a fleur-de-lys, stone panels beneath the windows of the central block and separate girls and boys entrances in stone surrounds with swans-neck pediments and inscribed.

The north elevation has a projecting three sided bay to the left with a capped copper roof and finial. This was the main element of the extension of the school in 1902. The central and right-hand sections have windows in triplets rising to a pair of shaped gables in a gambrel roof in the same style as that on the east elevation. The west elevation largely mirrors the composition of the east front although the central section lacks the ornate corbelled bell-cupola and has a metal fire escape. The left-hand section is largely blind but for a large pedimented cartouche bearing the date 1890 and inscription 'Merton Road/ School/ Lambeth' with a plaque bearing the entwined 'LSB' motif. A yellow brick single-storey extension, completed in 2007, abuts the west elevation at right angles and is not of special interest. The south elevation is plainer with a pair of minor gables breaking the eaves.

SUBSIDIARY FEATURES: At the south-east corner of the playground is the CARETAKER'S HOUSE, c1890. It has three-storeys in yellow stock brick with red brick dressings, a steep, pitched tile roof and roughcast gables. Projecting gabled porch has a red brick oculus below the gable with the London County Council coat of arms beneath with black metal scrolls bearing the legend 'London County Council' and 'Merton Road School'. BOUNDARY WALL of yellow stock brick with the east and south sides having a plinth and red brick transverse buttresses. IRON GATES with LSB motif set in stone surrounds on north, east and south sides.

INTERIOR: The original plan survives well, with classrooms opening onto a central hall on all three floors, originally for infants (ground), girls (first) and boys (second). There are two main stairwells on the east side of the building either side of the halls. The second floor hall has its original timber open truss roof and boarded ceiling, whilst the hall ceilings of the lower two floors are supported on steel joists. A large amount of internal glazing between hall and classrooms survives along with areas of glazed brick in corridors and on stairs, although mainly painted over.

HISTORY: Riversdale School was originally called Merton Road School, after the street that runs along its eastern boundary. It was built by the School Board for London in two phases in 1890-1 and 1902. A drawing by Bailey in The Builder of 12 June 1886 for Hackford Road Schools, Lambeth (which was built to this design but subsequently altered), contains many elements of the design for Riversdale.

The pioneering Elementary Education Act of 1870, steered through Parliament by William Forster and thus known as 'Forster's Act', was the first to establish a national, secular, non-charitable provision for the education of children aged 5-13. A driving force behind the new legislation was the need for a literate and numerate workforce to ensure that Britain remained at the forefront of manufacture and commerce. Moreover, the extension of the franchise to the urban working classes in the 1867 Reform Act also alerted politicians to the need to, in words attributed to the then Chancellor, 'educate our masters'. The Act required partially state-funded elementary schools to be established in areas where existing provision was inadequate, to be managed by elected school boards. The School Board of London was the first to be founded (in 1870), and the most influential. The Board was one of the first truly democratic elected bodies in Britain, with both women and members of the working classes on the board. It comprised 49 members under the chairmanship of the former Viceroy of India, Lord Lawrence, and included five members of parliament, eleven clergymen, the scientist Thomas Huxley, suffragists Emily Davies (an educationalist) and Elizabeth Garrett Anderson (a doctor), and a working-class cabinetmaker, Benjamin Lucraft. The Board's politics were ambitious and progressive, as epitomised by its passing of a by-law in 1871 compelling parents to send children to school; this was not compulsory nationally until 1880.

Such was the achievement of the London School Board in the last quarter of the C19, that by the Edwardian period few neighbourhoods in London were without a red brick, Queen Anne style, three-storey school designed by ER Robson, the Board's architect, or his successor TJ Bailey. The Board's adoption of the newly-fashionable Queen Anne style was a significant departure from the Gothic Revival deemed appropriate to educational buildings up until that point, and created a distinctive and highly influential board school aesthetic. Around 500 board schools were built in London, many in densely-populated, poor areas where they were (and often remain) the most striking buildings in their locales. The Board did not escape criticism, however, both on the grounds of expense to rate-payers and for potentially radicalising the urban poor through secular education. Yet its supporters were unapologetic, as the words of Charles Booth, justifying the expense of more elaborate schools in the East End, indicate: 'It was necessary to strike the eye and hold the imagination. It was worth much to carry high the flag of education, and this is what has been done. Each school stands up from its playground like a church in God's acre, ringing its bell'. Sherlock Holmes in Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's 'The Naval Treaty' (1894) also lauded the new metropolitan landmarks as 'Beacons of the future! Capsules with hundreds of bright little seeds in each, out of which will spring the wiser, better England of the future', thus epitomising the reformers' confidence in the power of universal education to transform society. The striking design of many of these schools is illustrative of this special history.

SOURCES
The Builder, Vol.50 June 12 1886, p848
SAVE Britain's Heritage, Beacons of Learning (1995)
Elain Harwood and Andrew Saint 'Report on Listing of London Board Schools' held at NMR (1991)
Timothy Walder, 'The evolution of the classic school design of the School Board for London (1870-1904): a reassessment of the role of Edward Robert Robson' (Institute of Education, University of London MA dissertation, 2006)
James Hall, 'The London Board Schools 1870-1904: Securing a Future for these Beacons of the Past' (University of Bath MSc. dissertation 2006-7)

REASONS FOR DESIGNATION: Riversdale School is listed at Grade II for the following principal reasons:
* a well-designed, asymmetrical London Board School of the 1890's by TJ Bailey;
* the principal elevation is striking and the dramatic roof-scape of cupolas, gables and tall chimneys is visible from some distance away;
* good quality materials and detailing and a reasonably well-preserved interior with a central hall on each floor;
* the school, caretaker's house and elaborate boundary wall and entrances form a characterful ensemble of late-Victorian and Edwardian educational buildings.

Reasons for Listing

Riversdale School is designated for the following principal reasons:
* a well designed, asymmetrical London Board School of the 1890s by TJ Bailey;
* the principal elevation is striking and the dramatic roof-scape of cupolas, gables and tall chimneys is visible from some distance away;
* good quality materials and detailing and a reasonably well-preserved interior with a central hall on each floor;
* the school, caretaker's house and elaborate boundary wall and entrances form a characterful ensemble of late-Victorian and Edwardian educational buildings.

External Links

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