HERITAGE STATEMENT

IN CONNECTION WITH

ALTERATIONS TO PROVIDE ADDITIONAL BEDROOM ACCOMMODATION

AT

No. 1B KINGSWAY PLACE

FOR

MR. M. HAMILTON

Prepared by:-

D.J.Bickley Station Farm Pilham GAINSBOROUGH Lincolnshire tel. 01427 629189

The Application

The Applicants seek planning permission for the internal alterations of 1B Kingsway Place to provide an additional bedroom and bathroom and extend the existing bedroom and bathroom for current and future family needs

The Property

1B Kingsway Place is situated in the London borough of Islington and lies to the east of The Barbican. The property is located in a residential area and has good vehicle access and parking for cars.

The History of Kingsway Place

Kingsway Place was originally a Victorian school built in 1892. In 1998 the school, which in more recent years had become a college, was converted into 60 apartments and offices. The history of the sites goes back much further, as the school was build on the original site of the jail. To this day under the site there still exists extensive parts of the original jail. These have been renovated over the last 10 years and are now frequently used as a location for films.

The building we are looking to alter was the former cookery and laundry to the "Former Hugh Myddelton School, Sans Walk” Building No 2 on the plan below:-

Former Hugh Myddelton School, Sans Walk T. J. Bailey, architect, 1891–3

Extract from British History website for background information only:- Now converted to flats and offices, the former Hugh Myddelton School comprises an important group of lateVictorian board school buildings: a main 'triple decker' block on a large scale, resplendent with buff terracotta facing; and a series of one-and two-storey special-purpose centres ranged about the perimeter of the site. Another of these satellite buildings, originally a deaf-and dumb school, was rebuilt on a larger scale after the Second World War as the Rosemary School for infants, fronting Woodbridge Street. The school was ceremonially opened on 13 December 1893 by the Prince of Wales. This was the first time that the School Board for London had been accorded the distinction of a royal opening for one of its establishments, an honour commensurate with the school's status as the biggest and most expensive yet built by the board, but also intended, no doubt, as an act of public exorcism of the site, formerly occupied by a state prison. Redevelopment had not entirely obliterated the physical presence of the old building: the school was in part erected on the old basement, where rows of cells were left intact, and the playground wall was in large part the prison wall, albeit reduced in height and punctured by new entrance gates. In his address, the chairman of the board called on the Prince to dedicate the site to 'higher and nobler ends' than those of the past. With the same ideals in mind, the school was named not after the street in which it stood, the usual practice of the board, but after the seventeenth-century creator of the —a name with a strong local association and connotations of purity, public health and the spirit of improvement.

On the closure in 1885–6 of the two Clerkenwell prisons, Coldbath Fields and the smaller House of Detention, the School Board obtained approval from the government Education Department for a new school on one or other of these sites. In neither case did the board have its eye on more than a portion of the ground, however. In 1887 the entire site of Coldbath Fields Prison was acquired by the Post Office; the House of Detention was bought by the School Board in 1888, for £20,000. This obviated the need for ground in Northampton Road, for which compulsory purchase powers had already been included in a Bill then going through Parliament. At about two-and-a-half acres the ground was larger than needed for the 2,000– pupil school proposed, and it was only as a result of the machinations of William Hazel, a builder and estate agent in the Old Kent Road, that the board came to acquire it all. (fn. 24) Hazel originally negotiated the purchase of the site from the Home Office for model dwellings, ostensibly on behalf of a philanthropic syndicate which was to have let just a portion to the School Board. Subsequently, however, he upset the Home Office by putting himself forward as the board's agent for buying the whole site, intending that the surplus ground should be sold on to him personally. In the end the board, no doubt to speed up the transaction and secure a site at the favourable price negotiated by Hazel, offered to buy the lot with a proviso that any surplus would be sold for low-rent dwellings. Having acquired the ground, the board evidently cast about for ideas to make full use of it, and in the end the question of selling part never arose. (Two small pieces of ground belonging to the site, but outside the prison walls, were subsequently conveyed to the parish and added to the public way in Sans Walk and Rosoman Street.) It was proposed at one time to use a wing of the prison as a temporary 'industrial school' for truants. A wing was used initially as a central depot for school furniture, and for a while the board intended to erect a new Stores Department building on the site. In the event, a new combined store for furniture, stationery and other supplies was built in Clerkenwell Close opposite the Hugh Myddelton School . Late in 1890 the prison was largely razed (Ill. 48), leaving just the boundary wall, the governor's house, warders' lodges and part of the basement intact. Mindful of the history of the site, the board put up a commemorative plaque inside the wall between the northern gateways, at the point where the 1867 Fenian bombing had occurred—the start of what was intended to be an on-going programme to record important historical associations of board school sites. Some local ratepayers, however, wanted the wall itself demolished and replaced by a railing, probably to dispel any lingering sense of a jail. Considerations of cost (and the likely nuisance from playground noise) prevailed, however. The main building, designed by the board's architect T. J. Bailey, was erected in 1891–3 by J. Bull, Sons & Co. Ltd of Southampton, opening in August 1893. It is built of yellow stock brick, with red-brick dressings, a facing of cream or buff terracotta largely confined to the upper floors, and red tiled roofs. The main, south range, facing Sans Walk, is flanked by massive towers with high pavilion roofs, the northern range by small polygonal staircase towers with ogee domes