Former St Michael's School, 21-25 Star Street, with 66 and 67 St Michael's Street, and attached railings to Star Street and St Michael's Street, City of Westminster, London

Summary

The former St Michael's School, built as a National School complex in 1869-1870 by Major Rohde Hawkins, for William Gibbs; the builder was William Cubitt and Co.

Description

Former National School complex believed to have been built in 1869-1870 – construction may have begun up to two years earlier – in a Gothic style, by Major Rohde Hawkins, for William Gibbs; the builder was William Cubitt & Co.

MATERIALS: London stock brick with stone dressings. The roofs are of slate, with pierced terracotta ridge tiles, and with brick stacks. The original metal-framed windows survive to the school building, some with moveable hopper sections; there is a dormer window at the eastern end of the roof on the north elevation. There are original timber windows to the houses; three small roof-lights have been inserted in the roof of number 67 St Michael’s Street.

PLAN: the main range of the SCHOOL BUILDING is rectangular on plan, with the entrance frontage on the north side of Star Street. To the north, a single-storey block attached at the west end of the range does not appear on the drainage plan of 1869 but is in place on the Ordnance Survey map published in 1896, and may have been part of the original building. At the east of the range, to the north, is the single-storey WC block; these facilities are in their original position but the original narrow shelter has been enlarged to form a rectangular block.

To the rear of the school building, facing northwards, are two houses, NUMBERS 66 and 67 ST MICHAEL’S STREET, originally providing accommodation for staff, linked to the school by a covered way, running to the east side of the playground, which forms an internal courtyard.

EXTERIOR: the SCHOOL BUILDING is of three storeys, with attic and basement. The Star Street elevation consists of a five-window section to the west, with a narrower two-bay section, representing the entrance and stair tower, to the east. Decorative interest is focused on the entrance bay, which forms a frontispiece emphasising the main entrance, topped by a gabled tower; the frontispiece combines a variety of elements in an original and strongly vertical composition. The entrance is set within an elaborate stone surround, surmounted by a triangular arch carved with a Greek cross. The door opening is square-headed, with a row of three mullioned basket-arched lights above; the opening contains double boarded doors. Above is a tympanum filled by circular tracery with carved foliate ornament depicting birds on branches, together with a small cross, supporting a circular plaque thought originally to have contained an inscription or dedication. The tympanum is framed by carved hawthorn leaves and berries, terminating the slender colonettes which mark the round-headed internal archway. Above the door surround is an arrangement with paired narrow windows set below and above a square panel within which is a square frame rotated 45 degrees bearing an image of St Michael the Archangel killing Satan in the form of a serpent or dragon, carved in high relief; the angel’s spear is made of metal. Floral medallions fill the corners of the panel are floral medallions. Above the higher pair of windows is a tympanum carved with a wave motif, below a heavy arched moulding. The gabled tower stage is slightly corbelled out and contains a four-light mullioned window; above, in the apex of the gable, is a circular opening pierced with a quatrefoil. The principal stair at the eastern end of the building is lit by narrow pairs of windows, rising to follow the ascent of the stair, with a basement window below. The substantial windows of the wide western section of the elevation are mullioned and transomed, the stone surrounds resting on string courses, with three-over-three light windows to the ground and first floors; on the second floor, the windows alternate between tall nine-light windows with basket-arched openings, and shorter three-over-three windows. In the western bay, there is a narrow window on each floor. At eaves level, the stone cornice is supported by a brick corbel-course, broken by triangular shouldered gables into which the tall windows rise, the gables filled by semi-circular arches filled with herringbone brickwork. Tall rectangular brick stacks with pilaster strips below deep dentillated cornices rise from the centre and east ends; a plain stack rises at the western end of the building. The northern elevation of the main building faces the courtyard and has mullioned and transomed windows below segmental brick arches; the lower part of this elevation is rendered and painted. The building is entered to the east through a round-headed doorway. The elevation has storey bands that separate the first and second floors continuing around the polygonal stair tower to the east, which rises to a pyramidal slated roof topped by a final. At second-floor level, the stair tower has a pair of trefoil-headed windows. In the roof to the east is a dormer window, possibly a later intervention. A passage through the stair tower to the east links with the covered way, which encloses the eastern side of the courtyard, and links with the houses to the north. The covered way is lit by three large arched windows with original multi-pane timber frames, the arches springing from sturdy columns with stiff-leaf capitals. A further arch to the north contains the door, panelled with glazing above, approached by steps protected by a ramped wall to the south, and an iron balustrade to the north. The north-west single-storey block is also rendered and painted, with a large mullioned and transomed window, and a skylight.

NUMBERS 66 AND 67 ST MICHAEL’S STREET are of two storeys with basement; each house is two bays wide, with the entrance in the narrower outer bay. The central bays are marked by a pair of triangular shouldered gables, and a stepped cornice runs at eaves level. A tall stack, as on the school building, rises from the ridge between the houses. The central bays have tripartite windows with timber mullions; the four-over-six sash frames are horned. Above the doors are smaller mullioned windows with pairs of two-over-four sash frames. The windows have stone sills. Number 67, to the east, has a round-headed doorway framed by a stone arch; the fanlight is filled with wrought-iron bars; the doorway of number 66, to the west, has a chamfered stone lintel above a square-headed mullioned light filled with geometric leaded glass. Both houses have wide boarded doors with sweeping foliate iron hinges. A stone band links the two doorways, following the arch of the doorway to number 67. Both entrances are approached by wide stone bridges crossing the area, each having an iron bootscraper. The south elevation of the houses, facing into the courtyard, links with the covered way to the east. Immediately to the west is a polygonal stair tower with a pyramidal roof. At the western end of the elevation is a doorway providing access to number 66, with a modern door. The fenestration on this elevation is somewhat irregular, with a tripartite window to number 66 at ground-floor level, and a narrower window to number 67.

INTERIOR: no internal inspection was made, so the description is based on other sources.

The SCHOOL BUILDING was originally planned to provide separate accommodation for each ‘school’, with infants on the ground floor, girls on the first floor (accessed via the rear staircase) and boys on the second floor (accessed via the main front staircase). The original plan form of the school remains broadly legible today, though there has been some reconfiguration, and numerous partitions have been erected within the large former schoolrooms, some partitions being only half-height. On the second floor the lower sections of arched roof trusses within the former schoolroom space – now partitioned – remain visible beneath a false ceiling. A plan of 1931 indicates that at that time there was a staff room on the attic floor, lit by the dormer window. The staircases remain in their original positions; besides the principal stair in the south-east corner of the building, and the north-eastern stair tower, a stair leads from the rear doorway to the lower ground-floor area to the west. A doorway has been added providing access from the main stair at first-floor level; the stair originally went straight to the boys’ school on the second floor, ensuring segregation. Within the entrance lobby, the secondary entrance is marked by a shouldered arch with complex moulded corbels and chamfered jambs. A number of historic features survive within the building. Window jambs are stop-chamfered internally, and several doorways retain moulded segmental-arched surrounds. Some false ceilings have been inserted, but in places transverse beams are visible, supported on convex corbels. The majority of the fireplaces appear to have been blocked, though at least one simple arched fire-surround remains, and one fireplace survives on the second floor. Within the covered way, the columns with their stiff-leaf capitals are visible, whilst pointed-arched roof-trusses are supported on convex corbels, beneath a pitched timber roof.

NUMBERS 66 AND 67 ST MICHAEL’S STREET. The covered way links to the north with a passageway entered through the doorway of number 67; it is thought that this provided access for girls and infants to their entrances to the rear of the school. The brickwork of the passageway is unrendered but painted. The private accommodation of number 67 is accessed from this passageway, through doors leading to the stair tower in the south-east corner of the building. Number 66 has a private entrance, with a stair contained within the south-west corner of the building. The arrangement of rooms within the two houses is nearly mirrored: each house has a front room on the ground floor, with fireplaces in the dividing wall, whilst in the rear rooms, the fireplaces are set diagonally, served by the same stack. The arrangement is thought to be similar on the first floor and basement storeys. The fireplaces have gothic stone surrounds and cast-iron register grates. The front room windows have shutters, with matchboard panelling below, and fitted cupboards.

SUBSIDIARY FEATURES: iron railings enclose the basement areas to both Star Street and St Michael’s Street, as well as to the courtyard side of the houses; the railings have spearheads, with urn finials to the junctions. Beneath the Star Street pavement are storage vaults, with flat-arched openings.

History

The building of St Michael’s School, Star Street, is thought to have begun in 1869 – there is some evidence that building may have begun up to two years earlier – and opened in 1870. Built as a National School (one founded by the National Society for Promoting the Education of the Poor in the Principles of the Established Church, generally known as the National Society) the institution was largely funded by William Gibbs of Tyntesfield, who commissioned the complex, consisting of the school building on Star Street, with separate schools for boys, girls and infants over three floors, and with two houses for staff to the rear on St Michael’s Street (formerly Market Street). The architect of the school was Major Rohde Hawkins, a favourite architect of Gibbs, who had built the Gothic Church of St Michael and All Angels in Star Street for Gibbs in 1860-1861. The parish was established in 1864, taken from part of the parish of St John the Evangelist, Hyde Park Crescent, where Gibbs himself worshipped; St Michael and All Angels was intended to serve the poorer district around Star Street, consisting of modest terraces built in the first part of the C19, with the school provided a few years later. To the rear of the school, in St Michael’s Street, Gibbs commissioned a row of artisan houses from William Butterfield, built in 1878-1880 (numbers 62-65), between the schoolhouses and the church; the former church vestry is adjacent.

By 1931 a department for canal boat children was established as part of the school, though based at the nearby Canal Boatman’s Institute. The church was damaged by Second World War bombing in 1941, closed in 1964 and was demolished in 1967. The school closed between 1970 and 1972 and is now home to an international school. The two schoolhouses on St Michael Street, originally providing accommodation for staff, are now in office use.

William Gibbs was a devout High Church Anglican, and a member of the Oxford Movement, which advocated the reinstatement of pre-Reformation, Roman Catholic practices into the Church of England, the ideas of the movement being published in 90 ‘Tracts for the Times’ (1833-1841); supporters were known as Tractarians. Gibbs’ philanthropic work included the funding of a number of church-building projects; in all, Gibbs is thought to have built, restored or contributed to over 19 churches, as well as providing almshouses, schools, institutions and hospitals. These included St Michael and All Angels at Clifton Hampden, Oxfordshire, in 1847 (where his brother was rector), and St Mary the Virgin, Flaxley (replacing the church where he was married), as well in 1868 paying for the chapel for the Tractarian Keble College, Oxford, designed by Butterfield. In the 1860s Gibbs took on the project of developing the Mount Dinham site in Exeter for charitable and educational purposes, funding the large church of St Michael and All Angels (1865-1868), designed by Hawkins – the building has been described as the ‘sister’ church to St Michael and All Angels, Paddington – together with almshouses and a school (1861-1862), designed by GW Cumming. Gibbs’s Anglo-Catholic outlook was also expressed in the lavish Gothic rebuilding of his house Tyntesfield between 1863 and 1865 with John Norton as architect and William Cubitt and Co as builders.

Major Rohde Hawkins (1820-1884) was the son of Edward Hawkins, Keeper of the Department of Antiquities at the British Museum and was himself an antiquary as well as an architect. Having studied under Thomas Cubitt, Hawkins then worked for Edward Blore, before setting up his own practice. Based in London, Hawkins’s work spans the period 1848 to 1881: notable projects, besides those at Star Street and in Exeter (where he also built the chapel of St Antony, Cowley, for William Gibbs, in 1867-1868), include Swarcliffe Hall, Birstwith, Yorkshire, built for the industrialist James Greenwood in 1848-1850, together Birstwith’s church (1856-1857) and school; the Royal Victoria Patriotic Asylum in Wandsworth (1857-1859), built as a school for the orphaned daughters of servicemen; and the church of St John the Evangelist, Holmwood, Surrey (1874) where he is buried. From 1854 until his death he was Architect to the Education Department of the Privy Council.

Reasons for Listing

The former St Michael’s School, Star Street, a National School of 1869-1870 (construction may have begun up to two years earlier), is listed for the following principal reasons:

Architectural interest:

* as an architecturally accomplished school complex believed to be by Major Rohde Hawkins, a noteworthy and versatile architect, making resourceful use of a compact site to provide spacious schoolrooms together with the segregation of boys, girls and infants, with Gothic detailing appropriate to each of its constituent parts;
* the intact street frontage includes a complex frontispiece with high-quality carving, including an arresting figure of St Michael the Archangel;
* the survival of the covered walkway, stair towers, and masters’ houses contribute to the variety and interest of the site; the girls’ entry via a passage accessed through the house frontage is a feature of interest;
* the school interior remains legible, with a layout characteristic of a school building of this date, which illustrates contemporary teaching practices.

Historic interest:

* the school pre-dates the introduction of board schools by the 1870 Education Act, and serves as a good example of a city-centre National School;
* for its association with the prominent Tractarian architectural patron William Gibbs, who funded numerous projects including Butterfield’s chapel at Keble College, Oxford, Hawkins’s church of St Michael and All Angels, Exeter, and his own house, Tyntesfield, by John Norton; this considerably more modest philanthropic development in Paddington was intended to serve a poorer district close to Gibbs’s London home;
* Hawkins’s role as Architect to the Education Department of the Privy Council, from 1854 adds interest to this school design.

Group value:

* although the Church of St Michael and All Angels which originally formed part of this group has been lost, the school buildings form a good group in their own right, together with the adjacent unlisted houses by Butterfield, and unlisted vestry in St Michael’s Street; the modest terraces of early-C19 houses in Star Street, representative of the historic neighbourhood the church and school were built to serve, survive well and are listed at Grade II.

External Links

Historic England Listing

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.