St Peters Primary School

The Department's description

Exterior description and setting

Single storey 1960’s primary school on an elevated site in a housing estate. Front elevation faces SE onto the playground.

Plan is unusual. To centre is an octagonal double height assembly hall. It has a gable to each of its faces and is abutted at ground floor to all but its right cheek. Its front, rear, left and right gables and the exposed right cheek are fully glazed. The roof is a folded octagon (over each gable). The three front and single left cheeks of the assembly hall each have a narrow wrap-around corridor abutting along their fronts. This corridor links, at left, the front and rear accommodation of the school and links each of the front three cheeks (of the assembly hall) to an octagonal satellite classroom. Each of these classrooms is smaller than the assembly hall, with a shallow octagonal roof and three glazed cheeks to front.

The left cheek corridor contains the main entrance, plainly detailed with a hexagonal paved threshold.

The rear of the school has a central rectangular kitchen (assembly hall being the dining room) flanked to left and right by conventional rectangular classroom blocks, the three together being wider then the assembly hall and the three octagonal classrooms.

Roofs are plainly detailed aluminium. Those to the corridors and rear kitchen and classrooms are all flat. All have boxed eaves which conceal rainwater goods. Plastic down pipes fall from the soffits. Plain grey brick chimney to kitchen block. Walls are grey brick, interlocking to the octagonal corners. External doors are glazed timber. All windows are stained timber, typically a pair of large fixed lights with plain painted linings and above are fixed transoms over which are louvred transoms. Gable windows in assembly hall are fixed and have five vertical panes, the central one having louvred glazing.

Historical information

St. Peter’s School was founded in 1848 and first based in the old school on St. Peter’s Street (HB16/11/039). This building was erected c1969. On the completion of a new school (in September 2000) it will become co-educational and merge with Star of the Sea Primary, based in the timber pavilion on Princes Street (HB16/12/035).

Criteria for listing: architectural interest

Not listed

Criteria for listing: historic interest

Not listed

Evaluation

This building illustrates a radical, informal and unusual departure from traditional school architecture. Its plan is of some interest with mostly octagonal blocks radiating from a central octagonal assembly hall. Simple in form, its assembly hall roof is raised and detailed to good visual effect, marking its importance as the core of the school. This building is due for demolition in June 2000. A new school, conventional in form and in red brick, is being erected on the same site to the S.