Former Grammar School. Early C20 (1909-1910). Architect, A Jessop Hardwick (1867-1948). Red brick in the Georgian style, with red brick moulded detailing, two storeys with a storey in the roof. There are three sections facing the Andover Road. At either end there is a gable, plastered in white with a fanlight window above the central first floor window. The central section consists of six bays either side of a central bay with a pillared entrance on the ground floor and a three-window bay above. The main entrance faces the Andover Road, Buckingham Road junction. Windows are tall Georgian style (pseudo sash), with a central window bay set on either end at ninety degrees to the front face. Ireland drive is the private access road to the building.
Girls School, later Girls Grammar School building from 1910, and part of a comprehensive school from 1975 until 2010. This building was refurbished into flats (36) in the 2010’s, and consequently Local Listing is limited to this building only, and to its external appearance from the road.
This building was built in 1909 /10 as the new home of Newbury Girls’ School (later the County Girls’ Grammar School). The school had been founded in 1904 and started its life in the Technical Institute in Northbrook Street with 39 pupils. By 1907 the County Education Committee had recognised that the school had outgrown this accommodation and purchased the site in the Andover Road for £1,200. In 1908 the County Council agreed to the building of the new school and commissioned the architect, Mr A Jessop Hardwick, who had already designed Maidenhead Modern School. There is a clear likeness between the two buildings; the Maidenhead Modern school is now part of Desborough College. Hardwick was based in Kingston-on-Thames and was well known at the time for ‘arts and crafts’ houses around London, Surrey and one large mansion in Wales, ‘Tredean’.
A tender from Mr J. B. Seward of Wokingham was accepted and building began in 1909. The school moved into its new home in 1910. Additions were made in the 1950s, ‘60s and ‘70s but these were all demolished when St Bartholomew’s Comprehensive School, as it had become, moved into its new buildings in 2010. The present building is broadly unchanged on the outside despite having been converted into apartments inside.
The Newbury Weekly News carried a detailed description of the building and described it as a ‘handsome Georgian structure with lofty and spacious classrooms.’ On the ground floor there was a large vestibule, five classrooms, a gym and cloakrooms. The main feature upstairs was a spacious assembly hall with seating for 200 people, a complete cookery centre with coal and gas cooking ranges, four more classrooms, two soundproof music rooms and an assistant mistresses’ common room. At the top of the building was an attic flat for the caretaker. A series of postcards were published of both external and internal views. There are two staircases, one tiled and the other, nearer to the main entrance, is made of wood. All of the corridors were tiled up to a dado level; plastered above.
The Luker Court building has significant importance to Newbury’s history as the home of the Girls School from 1910 to 1975 and of St Bartholomew’s Comprehensive School from 1975 to 2010. At this time the buildings were renamed as the ‘Luker’ site in honour of the first Girls School headmistress. The girls’ school championed the academic education of girls locally, and many women who went on to play a significant part in Newbury life were educated there; for example the first woman mayor of Newbury, Elsie Kimber. An application was made by a working group of Newbury Town Council to have the building nationally listed; however, this was turned down by English Heritage in 2007 on the grounds that Luker is late in date for a building of its type and style and did not demonstrate architectural innovation in a period of considerable secondary school expansion. Local Listing therefore acknowledges its historical role in the town’s history and its contribution to the streetscape. In addition, although not a nationally renowned architect, Hardwick designed some other notable buildings, including the school buildings which now form part of the Desborough College in Maidenhead.
HER Ref: MWB16462
Location
Open the location with: Google Maps | Bing Maps | OpenStreetMap