Henley Halebrown’s school and chapel hold pride of place in Clapham

While schools in European cities tend to be part of city blocks, in the UK they are often defensive spaces, set back from the street and protected by layers of chain-link fences or railings. A constrained site next to London’s Clapham Junction station, and the obligation to colocate a 430-place independent secondary school with a Baptist church, have given Henley Halebrown the opportunity to do something different. Its Thames Christian School and Battersea Chapel is a building that gives civic presence to both institutions, while deftly managing requirements for privacy and security. 

At first glance the six-storey building is a simple, almost cubic extrusion, but it rewards closer examination. What appears as a ground floor and piano nobile is in fact a set of double-height spaces for both the church and school, with large clerestories providing ample daylight. Above this sits most of the school, wrapped around two elevated courtyards facing roughly east and west, so that the accommodation describes the number ‘5’ of digital alarm clocks. 

This enables the school to be inward-looking, as well as providing important acoustic benefits, reducing noise from the station across the road and protecting the rest of the surrounding Winstanley Estate from the sound of boisterous teenagers.

Sheer walls meet the site boundary on three sides, while the fourth elevation is moderated to account for an existing garden and strand of mature trees. Project partner Simon Henley describes two protrusions from the main facade that provide the edges of a sheltered, south-facing courtyard as being like a ‘chest of drawers’. The effect is both to supply a pleasant antechamber for the school itself, and to discreetly add an extra layer of security.

The school’s main reception sits in the deeper of these ‘drawers’, and as you enter, your eye is drawn to the trees beyond. On such a small site in a dense urban area, it’s refreshing to see that every opportunity has been taken to celebrate existing greenery.

The composition has a settled quality, such that you don’t realise that the road to the east has been relocated to frame views of the estate, nor that the plaza to the north is an entirely new creation – a civic gesture at the entrance to the Baptist church. Outside, a free-standing cross was salvaged from its former building. Like the school, the church has relocated from further north in the estate as part of a wider masterplan by HTA – with input from Henley Halebrown – that both provides additional housing and reorganises the green spaces into something more legible and enjoyable.

Like many of Henley Halebrown’s buildings, the colour palette is restrained. Shades of creamy grey match both a new residential tower by HTA and the retained point blocks of the estate. The mortar is fairly closely matched to the brickwork, and complemented by precast concrete elements in a slightly darker tone. The impression is not of an assemblage of individual components, but rather something woven or perhaps hewn from some great block of textured stone.

Windows are deep set, with the ‘piano nobile’ announced by larger, rigorously spaced openings underscored by thick precast sills. At higher level the windows are more playfully arranged, in part to meet the needs of individual rooms, and in part in response to planners’ fear of blank facades. A set of rather beautiful cast study models illustrates the order and complexity of these facades, and highlights the little towers that announce the school to the south and the church to the north.

Anti-graffiti paint coats the ground floor with a strange, waxy texture. It is sometimes invisible, but from some angles or at certain times of day it gives a subtly darker shade to the brickwork, further grounding the building. This is a lovely detail, added after the planning stages – and therefore after Henley Halebrown’s involvement, as the practice was not novated – perhaps proving that Design & Build can have benefits after all.

From the entrance, the school is served by an open concrete stair that rises through the east end of the central bar of the ‘5’. This block is fully glazed, giving views onto the courtyards on either side and access to an external deck that leads to the classrooms. This is a recurring feature in educational buildings by Henley Halebrown, such as the Stirling Prize-shortlisted Hackney New School. Daylit and naturally ventilated routes to the classrooms make a stark contrast to the stagnant, echoing, strip-lit corridors of my own school memories.

The upper floors are typically one classroom deep  – with some variation in rooms for music and one-to-one teaching – which means that almost every space can be dual aspect. Deck-facing walls are mainly glazed, and therefore have a very different character to the more monolithic external walls. On my tour, the head teacher explained that this degree of transparency is much appreciated, allowing not only for passive surveillance of the students in the ‘corridors’ but also providing important safeguarding benefits for teachers.

The decks also act as a brise-soleil to prevent overheating, which is just one example of the considered but unusual environmental thinking found throughout. This isn’t a building covered in green roofs, solar panels or air-source heat pumps, and it has a fairly conventional concrete-framed structure, with most of the support coming from the external facade and a small number of columns to the courtyard elevations. Concrete is largely left exposed so it acts as a thermal damper, mitigating extremes of temperature. In turn, this means that rooms can be serviced with a ceiling-mounted MVHR with a heating/cooling coil, simplifying the overall servicing strategy and reducing ductwork and plant room size.

It’s a structure that enables a great deal of future flexibility; indeed even with the school roll filled to only half its capacity, there are already plans to enlarge the library. This pursuit of adaptable space rather than fixed rooms for specific purposes has the potential to greatly expand the lifetime of the building, making the initial investment  – in both carbon and cash terms – more sustainable.

With no outside space at ground level, literally every roof space has been pressed into service for play and recreation; six areas with varied characters serve different age groups. These range in scale, sense of enclosure and aspect, as well as in their degree of surveillance, from closely-watched play spaces for the younger pupils to more independent spaces for sixth-formers.

Though compact and constrained, this is a school that works hard for staff and pupils alike. All the teachers I met were extremely proud of their new building, with one suggesting that they were the finest facilities he’d used in his 40 years on the job – ‘saving the best till last,’ as he put it. It is also a building that works hard in its context – deftly managing the fine line between being an integral part of the estate, and being a noteworthy civic presence in its own right.

Richard Gatti is a co-founder of Gatti Routh Rhodes, whose work includes the Bethnal Green Mission Church

IN NUMBERS

Total contract cost  £25m
Gross internal floor area 5,175m²
Cost per m² £4,831