Summary
Board School, built 1871-1872, very probably to the designs of Henry Clutton.
Reasons for Designation
The Board School in Stibbington, built 1871-1872, very probably to the designs of Henry Clutton, is recommended for listing at Grade II for the following principal reasons:
Architectural interest:
* it was amongst the first board schools to be built, and as the survival of early board schools is uneven, it is particularly notable as a well-preserved example on a small scale;
* it is almost certainly by the highly regarded architect Henry Clutton who has a great many listed buildings to his name;
* its pared down Tudor style – characterised by the large mullion windows and tall, tapering chimneys – together with the finely moulded stone detailing, creates an accomplished and quietly authoritative composition;
* it retains its distinctive plan form consisting of one large, double-height schoolroom, flanked by two smaller rooms, in which many original features remain, including the panelling, fireplace surrounds, floorboards, cornicing and doors.
Historic interest:
* it played a significant part in shaping the lives of many hundreds of local children, and the survival of the school records further contributes to an understanding of its central role in the community.
Group value:
* it has strong group value with the Grade II listed schoolhouse, also built 1871-1872, together representing an ensemble of school buildings of architectural and historic integrity.
History
The former Board School (later known as the Stibbington Centre) was built in 1871-1872 with money provided by the 8th Duke of Bedford. In ‘The Buildings of England for Bedfordshire, Huntingdonshire and Peterborough’ (2014), the school is described as ‘very probably’ by Henry Clutton, as this architect undertook much work for the Dukes of Bedford, including designing and restoring country churches. Henry Clutton (1819-1893) was related to the Cluttons of Whitehall Place (Surveyors to the Ecclesiastical Commissioners). He trained under Edward Blore between 1835 and 1840, and commenced his own practice in 1844, inheriting many of Blore’s clients. He won first place in the Lille Cathedral competition with William Burges, his partner from 1851 to 1856; and his pupil and assistant was John Francis Bentley, with whom he built the Roman Catholic Church of St Francis of Assisi, Notting Hill, London (1859-1860). He was responsible for the Romanesque cloister at the Birmingham Oratory (1860), and was a proficient designer of Tudorbethan country houses. Clutton is associated with over 80 buildings on the List, mostly churches, houses and schools, several of which are listed at high grade.
The Education Act of 1870, steered by the Liberal MP William Forster (and hence known as the Forster Education Act) provided for the establishment of district boards of education to provide elementary schools and free education to those children whose parents were unable to pay. Board schools had to meet the strictures of the Education Department, who approved the site, plans and costs before agreeing a loan. There was no standard design, although the schools have many common features: most are simple buildings in brick or occasionally stone, with large windows and – usually – rows of gables. Initially, the majority of board schools followed the schoolroom plan, usually with separate rooms for boys, girls and infants. Most had a gallery, and subsidiary classrooms – usually at either end for best ventilation – where pupil teachers or young assistants taught under the supervision of the master or mistress.
The earliest schools show a bewildering variety of styles, until gradual specialisation by particular firms and the publication of their designs led to a greater homogeneity in elevations and plan types. The School Board for London was the first to be founded and proved to be the most influential. Its architect, E R Robson, built in Gothic but also promoted a cheap, secular alternative considered appropriate for the nondenominational board schools with echoes of the fashionable Queen Anne style. His book ‘School Architecture’ (1874) was highly influential, and from Robson’s office emerged the standard board school plan, with a central assembly hall and classrooms to three sides.
At Stibbington, a schoolhouse was also built 1871-1872, and was lived in by successive headmasters and caretakers until it was converted into a single dwelling for the headmaster in the first half of the C20. The schoolhouse, along with its wash house and pump, is listed at Grade II. The school closed in 1982 and the schoolhouse was sold into private ownership by the then owner, Cambridgeshire County Council. The remainder of the school site was used as an outdoor education centre until its closure in 2023. The original logbooks and other documents relating to the school and its inspections dating from 1872 survive.
Details
Board School, built 1871-1872, very probably to the designs of Henry Clutton.
MATERIALS: roughly dressed limestone laid to courses with ashlared dressings, and a roof covering of plain clay tiles.
PLAN: the building faces south and has a long rectangular plan with an outbuilding to the rear (north), parallel to the school.
EXTERIOR: the single-storey school is in a simplified Tudor style, characterised by large chimneys and expansive windows. It is double-height, under a pitched roof with a moulded eaves cornice and parapets, surmounted by ball finials, and prominent moulded kneelers supported by cavetto-moulded corbels. The building has a plinth and a platband, also with a cavetto moulding, which runs across the façade and return walls at sill level, rising over the three doors to form their frames. The fenestration consists of deeply recessed sash windows, without glazing bars, which from the outside appear as stone mullioned and transomed windows with simple projecting stone lintels. The façade is dominated by two tapered, projecting chimneys with wide bases of roughly dressed stone, rising into tall square ashlared stacks. The left chimney is flanked by large eight-pane windows which light the large school room; and the right chimney by vertical two-pane windows which light the smaller classroom. There are three doors: a plank and batten door is located off-centre between the large and small windows; and two-panel doors, with an upper glazed panel, are located in the single-storey, flat-roofed bays on each gable end. The return walls of these bays are lit by two deeply recessed single windows in moulded stone frames, with fixed lights and top-opening casements. The gable ends are lit by two large six-light windows, and an oculus in the gable head. The left (west) gable end retains the school bell, although it is mounted on a replacement bracket. The rear elevation of the single-storey bays, and the ground floor of the main school range, are built of roughly textured brown/ red brick, laid in English bond.
At the rear of the school is a single-storey outbuilding, also in rubble stone with ashlared dressings, under a hipped, tile-clad roof with exposed rafter feet. A tall stone chimney rises through the ridge on the right (west) hand side, above the former boiler room. A centrally placed plank and batten door with long strap hinges is flanked by two long horizontal windows with louvred openings, lighting the WCs. The gable ends have three light mullion windows in prominent frames which rise above the eaves. Attached to the corners of the outbuilding are blind stone walls which curve round to the single-storey bays on the school building, forming small enclosed areas. The linear space in between the outbuilding and the school has been covered over to form an internal corridor.
INTERIOR: the main range of the school contains a large principal schoolroom at the west end and a classroom at the east end, both double-height and retaining many historic features. The schoolroom and classroom both have original wooden floorboards and wooden moulded cornicing. The ceiling in the former room is divided into five sections by wooden ribs with a roll-moulding, and that in the latter room into two sections. Both rooms are lined with panelling, which cover the lower half of the walls, consisting of vertical lower panels and rectangular panels above with chamfered edges. The panelling in the schoolroom is painted white, and that in the classroom is stained. The latter is said to have been installed in the last thirty years but, if so, it is a very accurate reproduction, and appears to be original. The original doors survive, with lower panels of vertical planks, as do the very large fireplaces on the south wall in each room. These have simple stone surrounds and insets (now painted), depressed arch openings (now blocked), and stone hearths. In the schoolroom, an opening has been made in the west wall as a hatch to the kitchen.
The single-storey bays on each side have partition walls with upper glazed panels; that to the east is used as a store cupboard, and that to the west has been fitted out as a kitchen in one half. The other half retains some coat hooks, which may be original.
The outbuilding has been subject to alterations. On what was originally the external south wall (now an internal wall since the covered corridor was created), all the doors have been replaced. Modern WC facilities have been installed, and the wall around the former boiler room has been partly rebuilt in concrete breezeblocks.
