Board Schools in Crookes and Walkley

 

Burgoyne Street Board School in Walkley

Since alighting from the No. 51 bus on Manchester Road, I had spent a very busy hour and a half looking at historic architecture in Crosspool, the Lydgate Lane Council School, Crookes Cemetery gates and chapel and several Commonwealth War Graves.

 

Western Road Board School

With two more Sheffield Board Schools to inspect, I made my way quickly to the centre of Crookes and down Springvale Road to Western Road where, on the corner with Mona Avenue, the former Western Road Board School is sprawled over a site that contains three large buildings.

 

The elementary school on Western Road

 

The original school building on Western Road, for elementary pupils, was built in 1901 with a caretaker’s house to the design of the architects Holmes and Watson, who had already completed work for the Sheffield School Board at Tinsley Park Road and Pomona Street.

 

The caretaker's house on Western Road

It has elements of the Arts and Crafts style in its design, with the most prominent features being the large Flemish gables on the front elevation, as seen at Tinsley Park Road, with an elaborately carved bell turret rising from the central gable.

 

The bell turret

The boundary wall contains an unusual war memorial plaque, in the form of an inscription that records the planting of trees along Western Road and Gillott Street in memory of the pupils from the school who served in WWI.

 

A memorial plaque on the Western Road boundary wall

 

Moving on to the Mona Avenue elevation, although much of it is obscured by the high boundary wall, the Flemish gables here are still clearly seen. Looking closely at the blackened masonry, I was interested to see that the pinkish coloured sandstone used in the large window heads is similar to the one at Pomona Street; however, the walling stone, with its thin courses and planar bedding looks like another example of the Crawshaw Sandstone.

 

Flemish gables on the Mona Avenue elevation

In the centre of the site, there is a second large building that is similar in style with Flemish gables, built in 1903, but I could only get a glimpse of this at a distance through the boundary fence and I saw no sign of the carved inscriptions that are mentioned in the Victorian Society book Building Schools for Sheffield.

 

The 1903 extension

The third building that faces onto Mona Avenue, which was built only a year later, has a very utilitarian design that surprising has very in little in common with the earlier buildings, although Holmes and Watson are stated as being the architects.

 

The 1904 extension on Mona Avenue

Making my way back to Springvale Road, I headed down to Howard Road, along Walkley Street and then finally on to Burgoyne Road, where the original Burgoyne Road Board School is occupied by St. Mary’s Primary School and the 1889 extension has been converted into apartments.

 

The 1889 extension to the Burgoyne Road Board School

Built in 1881, it was the last school by the partnership of Innocent and Brown, with Thomas Brown dying that year and, now that the Sheffield School Board had severely tightened their budget, it has none of the extravagant architectural details that formed a trademark characteristic of most of the earlier work by C.J. Innocent.

 

The 1889 extension viewed from Burgoyne Road

I didn’t see the Cundy Street elevation on this occasion, which still has the original boundary wall and inscribed gate posts that mark the separate entrances for infants, girls and boys. It does not have much architectural merit and is not listed; however, as a geologist and building stone specialist, I think that the cleaned masonry shows the Crawshaw Sandstone in its best light.

 

A view of cleaned and dirty Crawshaw Sandstone