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Ashmount primary |
School is ‘an experiment gone wrong’
Governors chairman calls for pupils to leave ‘over-heated, uncomfortable’ glass building
A ROW over the rebuilding of Archway’s Ashmount primary school has erupted after the chairman of governors warned that children and staff were having to put up with “appalling conditions”.
David Barry, an occupational psychologist, hit out at conservationists who are campaigning for the 1960s-built Hornsey Lane school to be refurbished on the current site to preserve its architectural features, including large sections of glass-based construction.
Father-of-two Mr Barry said: “It may be architecturally important, but as far as children and teachers are concerned it’s a glass folly.
“It’s like a conservatory – very cold during the winter and over-heated in summer. There are no corridors, which means that children and staff have to walk through adjoining classrooms to reach the stairs. And the only toilets are on the ground floor.”
He was replying to a letter that appeared in last week’s Tribune by architect James Dunnett, a leading figure with the Islington Society, who expressed fears that the unique building – designed by HT Cadbury-Brown, one of the principal architects of the Festival of Britain – would be lost forever if the school were to vacate the site.
Last December Ashmount headteacher Pana McGee sent staff out to buy electric heaters saying she could no longer watch children shivering with cold in their classrooms.
Mr Barry, of Dresden Road, said that even the frames of the building were contracting.
He added: “The school was built as an architectural experiment, presumably to provide more light. Well, some experiments just don’t work. What the designer never predicted was that we would have hotter summers which would make life very uncomfortable.”
Leading members of the school’s parents and teachers association, including TV comedian and co-chairwoman of the PTA, Arabella Weir, and the majority of other parents, have voted in favour of creating a new Ashmount on the site of a derelict pavilion on Crouch Hill recreation ground.
The scheme, scheduled for 2010, would allow disused green space to be opened up for community use after school hours.
However, the new development would be paid for by selling or even demolishing the current school building in Hornsey Lane and using the site for private housing.
Mr Dunnett admitted that two respected conservation groups, the 20th Century Society and the Documentation and Conservation of Buildings, Sites and Neighbourhoods of the Modern Movement, had failed to get the school building listed.
He added: “Despite that it is a very subtle and sophisticated piece of work and should be preserved. Many of Cadbury-Brown’s works are very highly regarded.
“It is certainly one of the most interesting modern buildings of its period in Islington.”
And Mr Dunnett believes it would be possible to refurbish the school on its current site.
“For example, double-glazing might cure the cold problem and there are plenty of techniques to reduce the heat,” he said.
The new Ashmount was described by the Architects’ Journal of the time as “first rate”, with a “refined elegance throughout”.
Cadbury-Brown commissioned a sculpture by John Willats, a former pupil at the Royal College of Art, and his cockerel remains perched on the front wall. |
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