Eveline Lowe School

Details

636-1/0/10089 MARLBOROUGH GROVE 03-JUL-06 Eveline Lowe School

II

Primary and nursery school, originally built to serve children aged 3-9, now those aged 3-7. Designed from 1963 onwards, built 1966 by the Development Group of the Department of Education and Science in conjunction with the Inner London Education Authority; DES team led by David and Mary Medd, working with education experts. MATERIALS: Brick, with partial steel frame on pile foundations. Large plate glass timber windows affording views to the smallest children, with panel infill under and ventilating louvres; strong eaves cornice, with late-C20 plastic replacing the original timber, under pitched tiled roofs. A four inch module was adopted. The eaves line continued out in a series of covered verandas to each pair of classrooms. Single storey, with higher hall lit by concealed clerestorey glazing. PLAN: Organic plan centred around two main courtyards, one serving the main school and centred on the main hall, the other separating the nursery and youngest infants' rooms. EXTERIOR: The deep plan encouraged the use of pitched roofs, initially as an economy, and the building reads as a series of linked pavilions. Though the exterior is deceptively simple, its use of brick and timber forms a consistent idiom. Principal courtyard with central brick feature incorporating a raised pond. Paling fence to front enhances the line of the timber eaves. The late-C20 temporary structures on the site are not of special interset. INTERIOR: There were originally eight paired 'teaching centres', one classroom now used as library and one as staff crèche. The two at the south end are for the nursery groups, and is now the only part of the building where two classes of children are still taught by staff working collaboratively throughout that area as an integrated team with mixed age groups. These are partially detached from the rest of the school save by a covered area. Central four rooms for infants, including one room now used as library. These are linked by a corridor dining area to the staff offices, main hall and kitchen. To the north east is a classroom for older children, a staff crèche and a general purpose meeting room. Each group of classrooms originally had a quiet space, that for young infants conceived as a kiva- a Native American derived word for a retreat, and here a square room with steps on which the children can sit round for reading; that for older children, originally with tables for quiet study, now serves as the staff room. The classrooms themselves are conceived as general working areas, with a large sink, cupboards, mobile bins, walk-in stores, bulletin boards and shelving; and each original pair share a veranda where messy or noisy activities, as well as quiet table-top activities, can be undertaken. The interior features fine quality pine timber ceilings to most areas, and fixed shelving and seating, particularly in the nursery dining area and hall/gymnasium. This last has a Drifloor system floor of linoleum, cork, hardboard and sand, then an innovation. Kiva with carpeted raised floors round central well, with timber wall fixtures. Washroom fixtures developed from those devised by the Medds and others for Herts CC in the late 1940s. HISTORY: Research by the DES Development Group showed that primary school children did not need a conventional classroom, but a range of facilities in which they could undertake a variety of creative activities, some quiet, some messy. By eliminating corridors entirely, the DES were able to produce a greater variety of spaces within a low budget. This concept began in the Hertfordshire Schools in the late 1940s, whence David and Mary Medd and their team were drawn, in part to provide children with space for a growing range of activities but more generally as a means of achieving the cost limits introduced in 1949-50. Eveline Lowe is itself a development of the first open plan schools for very small, rural communities, devised by the then Ministry of Education at Finmere, Oxfordshire, and Great Ponton, Lincolnshire in 1958 and encouraged by the Ministry's Handbook on Primary Education in 1959. Whereas in the late 1950s the teaching of a range of infant ages together was conceived only for rural areas, by 1963 this was seen as a way of encouraging and enabling a style of teaching that involves children in active and creative learning experiences in groups of varying size. These ideas were explored by the Central Advisory Council's committee set up under Lady Plowden in these years. Though built of conventional materials the school is thus the culmination of ideas on making better use of space and incorporating new methods of teaching begun in the 1940s. As the local children mainly live in neighbouring high flats, it was felt important that the school should be single storey, though this was more expensive. It was erected within the standard cost limits of the day, although exceptionally difficult soil conditions dictated expensive foundations and difficult landscaping. Its construction, devised by the long-standing team of DES architects and educators in conjunction with members of the London County Council and its successor the Inner London Education Authority, coincided with the publication of the Plowden Report into primary teaching in 1967 and marked a return to the consideration of primary schools after years of preoccupation with secondary education. Eveline Lowe was very widely influential, in the United States as well as in Great Britain. The school was ceremonially opened in February 1967 by the Right Hon. Anthony Crosland, MP and Secretary of State for Education and Science. The school was named after a local politician, active in Southwark from the 1930s.

ASSESSMENT OF IMPORTANCE: The Eveline Lowe School, opened in 1967 to the designs of David and Mary Medd for the Department of Education and Science in partnership with the Inner London Education Authority, marks an important phase in post-war educational ideas and design, for which it has special historic interest. It also has special architectural interest, primarily for its planning and interiors, these intrinsically linked to the educational philosophy out of which it was designed, as well as exhibiting a sophisticated and successful series of flexible spaces. Its design successes were the creation of village-like character and strong links to the landscape for its students who were mainly from neighbouring tower blocks; the semi-open plan that comprises clusters of flexible teaching spaces and thoughtful use of circulation areas; and the warmly fitted interiors with built-in furniture. This initially unassuming school is actually a rather extraordinary success of educational philosphy-driven design, that on closer inspection reveals its very special character and remains remarkably fit for purpose.

SOURCES: Department of Education and Science, Building Bulletin 36, 1966 Interbuild, November 1966, pp.12-17 Interior Design, December 1966, pp.568-72 Architects' Journal, 16 November 1966, pp.1195-6 Building, 3 November 1967, pp.101-4 Department of Education and Science, Building Bulletin 47, 1972 Neville Bennett, Jenny Andreae, Philip Hegarty, Barbara Wade, Open Plan Schools, 1980. Bridget Cherry and Nikolaus Pevsner. Buildings of England London 2: South. (London: Penguin Books, 1983) TQ3429478269

Legacy

The contents of this record have been generated from a legacy data system.

Legacy System number:

494384

Legacy System:

LBS

Sources

Books and journals
Bennett, A, Hegarty, W, Open Plan Schools, (1980)
Cherry, B, Pevsner, N, The Buildings of England: London 2: South, (1983)
Architects Journal in 16 November, (1966), 1195-1196
Building in 3 November, (1967), 101-104
Interior Design in December, (1966), 568-572
Interbuild in November, (1966), 12-17

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