Building record 1160/441/13 - The Old School

{1} The school at Northampton Workhouse was established in 1872, at a time when the concept of herding children into large institutions was being openly questioned. In order to build it, additional land was purchased on the west side of the existing workhouse, in a previously wooded area.
As originally constructed, the school was a long narrow three-storey structure, with an eastward projecting wing, and two stair towers to the west. It is constructed in red brick, laid in English Bond, with a moulded, do-toothed eaves band, and 4-course bands of blue brick linking the first and second-floor sills. On the east elevation, windows are almost all 6-pane sashes with stone sills and curving blue brick lintels. The end windows on the ground floor are similar but wider. Lintels and bands are painted white: this may be a later embellishment. On the west elevation, windows north and south of the stair towers are as in the east elevation, while the central section has two double-width windows on each floor, with similar lintels and sills. As built, the stair towers had a door beneath a curving brick lintel at ground level, with a single tall window on each floor above: those in the south tower were bricked up when the present lift was installed.
Internally, the school was sexually segregated, boys to the north and girls to the south, and the original layouts would have been mirror images. As was common in all Victorian schools, the sexes had separate entrances, leading to separate stairwells rising to the second floor. The north stair remains intact: the south was removed to install a lift when the building became a hospital in the 1930s. At this time, the south stair tower was raised to accommodate the lift mechanism. The brickwork of this added section matches the blocking of the windows below. To the north and south of the towers, each floor appears to have comprised a large room with a central fireplace on the west side, with a smaller room beyond, with a fireplace on the end wall. The central part of the builidng appears to have been divided into two rooms on each level. From changes in its brickwork, it appears that the eastward extension to the school was originally a single-storey structure, though subsequent alterations and additions make it difficult to ascertain its original form and function.
The school has a small single cellar, beneath the north stairwell. As this was most likely used as a coal store, it is possible that there was a second cellar beneath the south stairwell, serving the girl's school.
Conversion of the school to a womens infirmary required significant changes to the building. By 1926 the two sanitary towers had been added to the west elevation, and probably several of the other extensions on this side of the building. It is difficult to date most of the smaller additions accurately, as the information provided by the relevant OS maps cannot be readily reconciled with the survey plan. Internally, there was some subdivision of the original large rooms, and enlargement of others, though it is uncertain how much of this relates to the 1911 conversion, or to the transformation of the workhouse to a hospital in the 1930s. Following the installment of central heating, most of the fireplaces on the upper floors were removed. On the first and second floors, large windows were inserted into the north elevation where chimney breasts had been removed.
The final major change to the school building appears to have been in the 1960s, when the eastward extension was rebuilt. Map regression evidence shows that a small structure on its east side, possibly an entrance porch, was removed. From the survey, it appears that the upper storey was added at this time, as an extension to the existing hospital ward.

<1> Zeepvat B., 2004, Historic Building Survey: St Edmund's Hospital, Wellingborough Road, Northampton, P. 28 (checked) (Report). SNN104796.

Record last edited

May 19 2020 12:12PM