Ashmount Primary School

Hornsey Lane, London N19
H. T. Cadbury-Brown 1954-6
Locally listed, Conservation Area

Ashmount School was built for the London County Council as a combined infant and junior school to designs by the architect H. T. Cadbury-Brown and consulting engineers Bolton, Henessey and Partners. The building makes clever use of a difficult sloping site in North London. It is also an important example of an all-glass curtain wall construction.

The three-storey junior block on the north side is level with the main road, and its playground area extend southwards below. From the outside it appears continuous, with individual floors hardly visible. Raised on a concrete platform, it is enveloped in a glass membrane where glass at the corner junctions is fused with glass. Clear rectangular glass spandrels are juxtaposed with semi-opaque sections - eschewing the then common use of standard blue panels although some replacement blue panels were added later – and allow maximum light in the building but also provide essential privacy for teachers and students.

The infants’ school, placed at a right angle to the junior school, occupies two floors. It has its own entrance positioned at half level on the side street. The two building blocks, infant and junior, are linked by a shared assembly hall, incorporating kitchen and administration buildings. The three main blocks employ a standard system of light steel construction incorporating some areas of brickwork to support extensive glass curtain walling. A natural hierarchy of junior to infants is achieved through the positioning of the blocks. This equally provides a sense of security to the infant school building which, due of the steep slope of the land, is couched behind the main block with all rooms facing inwards.

Ashmount School is an architecturally sophisticated exercise in advanced metal and glass aesthetics, using exposed steel section beams as featured in the architecture of the Festival of Britain. The construction is also reminiscent of the Californian Schools programme, the Eames House and even Hunstanton School by Peter and Alison Smithson.

Also of interest is a wonderful cockerel sculpture by John Willats perched on the wall above the school’s main entrance and paid for privately by the architect.

The building is currently under threat of demolition and the Twentieth Century Society has put Ashmount School forward for spot listing. This ground-breaking and exciting building should be retained and refurbished, not replaced as Islington Council proposes. The council is currently planning to replace around six of its school buildings and sites. The schools would be demolished in favour of new housing – which promises big profits - and new school buildings. With Ashmount this is a severe threat to an interesting post-war building and the qualities of its site, half of which is open playground at the moment.

Rachel Lubbock

Status–January 2006
Ashmount School was turned down for listing in 2005 and there is little hope that the building will survive. Even though its physical future seems doomed, it will be honoured as part of a retrospective exhibition of the work of Cadbury-Brown which will be on show at the Tennant Room, Royal Academy of Art, in October-December 2006.

Further reading
Andrew Saint: Towards a Social Architecture
The Role of School Building in Post-War England. New Haven and London, 1987

Contacts
Conservation Department, Islington Council, tel: 020 7527 2791

Image credits
Team 3