Summary
University hall of residence. Built in 1963 to 1967 to designs by Isi Metzstein and Andrew MacMillan of Gillespie, Kidd and Coia, who were appointed by the University of Hull in 1961.
Reasons for Designation
Downs Hall, 1963 to 1967 to designs by Isi Metzstein and Andrew MacMillan of Gillespie, Kidd and Coia for the University of Hull, is listed at Grade II* for the following principal reasons:
Architectural interest:
* as part of an exemplary and innovative scheme of six halls of residence that carefully considered the psychological welfare of students, moving away from the traditional corridor model to irregularly shaped blocks set around self-contained quadrangles with staggered study bedrooms recessed behind balconies and arranged in smaller groups to ensure privacy, individuality and an intimate scale;
* the grouping and alteration of blank side walls and open balconies creates a dynamic advancing and receding rhythm across the building;
* the high-quality handmade brickwork and the provision of private balconies for each study bedroom belies the limited funding with which the architects were required to work;
* as one of the first university buildings designed by the innovative architects Metzstein and MacMillan of Gillespie, Kidd and Coia, an internationally renowned Scottish practice best-known for their pioneering church designs, whose prowess is also shown in their university designs, which are amongst the best of their peers and include the later Robinson College, University of Cambridge, also Grade II*.
Historic interest:
* The Lawns was an integral component of the post-war master planning of the University of Hull overseen by Sir Leslie Martin, whose astute and generous championing of the most innovative young architects’ practices resulted in a number of excellent modernist buildings, including Peter Moro’s Gulbenkian Centre (drama teaching building) and Peter Womersley’s sports hall, as well as his own Middleton Hall, Chapel and Larkin Building (Faculty of Arts), all listed at Grade II.
Group value:
* with the other Grade II* listed halls of residence buildings forming The Lawns.
History
The University of Hull was founded in 1927 as University College Hull and granted University status in 1954. The Lawns residential campus was built between 1963 and 1967 on 27 acres of parkland in Cottingham for the University to designs by the architects’ practice of Gillespie, Kidd and Coia.
The parkland had been associated with Cottingham Grange, built in 1801 by Hull merchant George Knowsley. The 1838 tithe map showed the house in a parkland setting, which was expanded by the Ringrose family in the second half of the C19 after the estate was purchased by the merchant William Ringrose in 1841. The 1:10560 Ordnance Survey map surveyed in 1852, published in 1855, labels the parkland closest to the house as The Lawn. The larger estate was broken up in 1930 and the house demolished around 1951 to make way for a new secondary school (Cottingham High School and Sixth Form College).
During the Second World War the parkland was used as a temporary camp. Nissen huts were erected in 1939 in preparation for evacuees from Hull and then by 1944 it was used by African American troops, who were accommodated separately from their white peers under the American racial segregation rules of the time. Following the end of the war the Nissen huts, then known as Camp Hall, were used to accommodate students from the University of Hull. In the mid-1950s the parkland was subdivided with the western part going to the school and the eastern land handed to the university for new student accommodation. Ferens Hall, a neo-Georgian hall of residence was built on the eastern edge in 1956-1957.
There was a rapid post-war increase in student numbers nationally facilitated by the Barlow Report of 1946, with regular government spending on university building projects via the University Grants Committee (UGC) begun in the 1940s and the introduction of maintenance grants, formally mandated by the Education Act of 1962. Having gained university status in 1954, by 1958 Hull anticipated an expansion of student numbers to 2,000 and appointed Sir Leslie Martin (1908-2000) as consultant architect to provide a masterplan for the expansion. Martin had been head of the school of architecture at Hull College of Art from 1934-1939, and in 1956 became the first professor of architecture at the University of Cambridge, at the same time establishing a private practice, working with Colin St John Wilson on a number of projects in the higher education sector. His advice was often sought by vice-chancellors during the rapid university expansion of the 1960s.
Martin often acted as a catalyst for other architects, recommending small and innovative architectural practices through his network of contacts and personal preferences. His initial proposal in 1960 was for residences for 1,000 students on the Lawns site. Pressure of work meant he then decided to hand the work over to another practice, recommending Peter Moro and Lyons, Israel and Ellis, and later adding Gillespie Kidd and Coia (GK and C) to the list, recommending the latter as worth having a look at due to their interesting work, though he did not know them personally. In 1961 GK and C were appointed after interviews with all three practices where their previous work was presented.
Although Martin had originally specified four more symmetrically arranged halls of 250 students, the scheme presented in 1961 divided the overall population into eight smaller halls of 135 students making up the total of just over 1,000. Soon afterwards this was expanded to twelve halls, giving a total of 1,600. Each hall formed a self-contained quadrangle. Study bedrooms were divided into five staggered units each grouped around a staircase of 27 students, further broken down into smaller groups of nine on each floor set around landings and sharing a kitchen, bathroom, two showers and two WCs on each floor, with communal parlour areas on half-landings. A lower range behind housing wardens and tutors and a house keeper’s office closed the quadrangle. Halls abutted to form longer, undulating walls and were placed around the edge of the expansive site with mature trees preserved and a lake added to the central grassed area. Andrew Macmillan was to say later that one of the chief inspirations was Le Corbusier’s 1949 sketches for housing at Roq et Rob, Roquebrune-Cap-Martin, on the Cote d’Azur. A separate student centre intended to contain dining facilities, a senior common room, a library, a lecture theatre, bars, seating areas and spaces for games and dancing was located at the southern end, at the head of the approach road from which point vehicular and pedestrian routes separated with vehicles restricted to a perimeter road and shorter, more direct pathways for students.
The halls of residence were built between 1963 and 1967 with the first to be built being the abutting eastern row of Lambert, Nicholson and Morgan Halls, with Downs Hall standing separately at the northern end. Reckitt Hall and the abutting Grant Hall were then built on the west side. The earlier two-storey wardens’ flats had their entrances in the courtyards, while those to the two later halls differed, being single-storeyed and the university insisted on their entrances being outside the courtyards. UGC funding meant that each individual building had to be the subject of a competitive tender, and although the university argued against this approach, progress was slow. Financial cuts then meant that the scheme was halted in 1968 with only six of the halls of residence built. The student centre, built in 1965 to 1968, had a reduced form, only three out of the group of five academic bungalows on the east side of the halls were built and another separate group of fourteen similar bungalows to the south of Ferens Hall were not built at all. The lake was not constructed.
The complex won the RIBA Bronze Regional Award in 1968. The six halls of residence were listed at Grade II* in 1993.
In 2007, the site suffered major flooding and between 2007 and 2009 a refurbishment programme was carried out by Gammond Evans Crichton. En-suite showers and WCs were inserted into four of the halls, but not into Downs Hall, or Morgan Hall. Larger kitchens were provided on each staircase floor of the halls, replacing either a study bedroom and the original small kitchen or a double study bedroom.
The University closed Downs Hall in 2018, along with Reckitt Hall. Lambert, Nicholson, Morgan and Grant Halls were closed in 2019.
Gillespie, Kidd and Coia was a Glasgow-based architectural practice initially founded by James Salmon in 1830 and inherited by John Gaff Gillespie in 1903. Giacomo Antonio “Jack” Coia was made partner in 1927 and inherited the practice following the deaths of Gillespie and William Alexander Kidd in 1927 and 1928 respectively. Coia, born in Wolverhampton of Italian extraction, secured work from the Diocese of Glasgow and continued the connection after the Second World War, but from 1954 delegated most of the design work to two young assistants, Isi Metzstein (1928-2012), a German Jewish refugee, and Andrew MacMillan (1928-2014) a highland Presbyterian. They combined their design work with teaching; MacMillan served as head of the Mackintosh School of Architecture from 1973 to 1994. Most of their work in Scotland is listed. They pioneered Liturgical planning in Roman Catholic Churches, beginning in 1957 at St Paul, Glenrothes. The best of their Scottish churches are listed at category A, including their seminary at St Peter’s, Cardross (1958-1966, LB6464). Although they remain best known for their religious buildings, Sir Leslie Martin encouraged the practice to diversify into university buildings, commencing with the Lawns. In 1977 to 1980 they constructed Robinson College, University of Cambridge, listed at Grade II* in 2022 (National Heritage List for England (NHLE) entry 1482703). The practice closed in 1986.
Details
University hall of residence. Built in 1963 to 1967 to designs by Isi Metzstein and Andrew MacMillan of Gillespie, Kidd and Coia, who were appointed by the University of Hull in 1961.
MATERIALS: the hall of residence is built of loadbearing brick walls in buff and grey handmade sandstock bricks with ground floors and roofs of timber and intermediate floors of concrete.
PLAN: Downs Hall is one of six halls of residence which all form an integral part of The Lawns planned layout. Each hall comprises a self-contained quadrangle of three-storey study bedrooms plus a basement and a lower range behind housing wardens and tutorial staff together forming a roughly triangular plan, but with broken and staggered sides. Staggered cross-walls form a series of parallelograms defining the study bedrooms which are split into five-self-contained staircase units. Each room has its own angled balcony concealed from its neighbour by the stepped plan. Downs Hall stands between the abutting group of Lambert Hall, Nicholson Hall and Morgan Hall, and of Reckitt and Grant Halls, which form two linear groups with longer zig-zag walls of study bedrooms.
EXTERIOR: Downs Hall is freestanding to the north-west of Lambert, Nicholson and Morgan Halls, and facing towards Reckitt and Grant Halls. The outer, flat-roofed, brick elevation of three storeys and a basement faces west with five obliquely angled blocks of five stepped bays projecting out in a rough triangle to the foremost central block. Each study bedroom has an orthogonally set window and balcony, concealed from its neighbour by the stepped plan. The balconies have thick, brick balustrades with narrow gaps below. Rows of bricks set vertically or on edge mark floor and roof slabs and the edges of the balustrades. The rooms have timber-framed sliding windows to access the balconies. Each block also incorporates an orthogonal staircase bay with full-width fixed and top-hinged timber-framed windows and copper fascias. The staircase bays are set in different positions in the various blocks giving a varying rhythm to the facades. On the right-hand side of the central block is a shallow, angled flight of brick steps down to an underpass through to the quadrangle. The brick return walls have three or four rows of horizontal windows mostly to the inner end, some with an offset deeper window beneath, lighting kitchens/bathrooms; the central block also has a timber-framed sliding glazed doorway to the right return.
The inner elevation has three-storey, five-bay stepped blocks of study bedrooms with balustrades with the central three blocks facing east into the quadrangle and the two outer blocks overlooking grass and trees. Three external flights of brick steps with steel ribbon balustrades lead up to over-sized timber and glazed doorways into staircase halls and a shallow flight of wide, brick-edged steps and an angled flight of brick steps lead down to the underpass, where there are oversized doors into the two other staircase halls. Paths alongside the blocks are edged with low, zig-zag brick walls.
The quadrangle is closed by the lower, flat-roofed east range with similar detailing to the brickwork. Abutting the inner corners of the outermost three-storey blocks are single-storey stepped blocks of two bays with sliding windows opening into the quadrangle and doors to the side elevations. The north block is attached to a two-storey, flat-roofed warden’s house and a long single-storey, single-bay block of offices and senior common room, with an attached garage and storage to the east. A canopy over the quadrangle entrance attaches it to the south block, with a bin store to the east. The warden’s house has a stepped front elevation facing into the quadrangle, with a glazed porch and landing window above, both with copper fascias, and a taller block on the left with two horizontal slit windows on the first floor and a small rectangular window on the ground floor. The rear, east elevation is stepped with windows on both floors.
INTERIOR: each of the five study bedroom blocks is arranged around a staircase either placed parallel to, or at right angles to stepped rooms on wide landings. Half-level parlours opening off the staircases are separated by inserted, glazed timber screens and doors. On each floor larger kitchens have been inserted either into former double study bedrooms or extended single rooms.
The circulation areas have exposed brick walls with concrete floor plates and plywood panelling, wood-veneered doors and timber architraves on the landings. The ground-floor stair entrances have tiled floors and the ceilings on the ground floor and top floor have timber boarding. The staircases have balustrades of three horizontal timber rails fixed to slender square, black steel posts and steel brackets. The upper and middle rails are swept with individual, straight bottom rails. The study bedrooms have plastered walls.
The warden’s house has exposed brick walls to the stairwell, first-floor landing and the double-height dining area at the foot of the stairs, which is separated from the living room by a feature brick wall, with a hatch in the opposing wall into the kitchen. The rooms are otherwise plastered, with wood veneer doors and timber architraves. The porch and dining area have tiled floors, and the living room, dining room and landing have timber boarded ceilings. The closed-string staircase has plywood panelling beneath the balustrade of slender, vertical timber posts attached to a horizontal rail and alternating between a number of full-height posts and lower posts forming apertures. A similar balustrade on the first-floor landing overlooks the dining area. Most fixtures and fittings have been replaced. The attached blocks have some tiled floors, and wood-veneered doors and timber architraves. The former senior common room has exposed brick walls, some plywood panelling, and a timber boarded ceiling with a canopy with square lights. Most fixtures and fittings have been replaced
Mapping note: the courtyard contains low walls bounding paths, external steps to the staircase blocks and steps to the underpass. There are also steps to the underpass on the west side of the building. Not all of these are shown on MasterMap and so the entire courtyard and the location of the west steps are mapped to include these features.
