Building record BSE 494 - Guildhall Feoffment School HORSA Huts

The kitchen and dining hall at the Guildhall Feoffment School is a detached structure in the north-eastern corner of the yard and consists of two HORSA huts adjoining at right-angles. HORSA huts were designed in 1944 as an efficient and inexpensive means of expanding Britain’s school buildings to accommodate the sudden increase in pupil numbers in the wake of Rab Butler’s 1944 Education Act, which raised the leaving age from 14 to 15. Suspended due to the war, this was finally implemented in April 1947, and coincided with a national programme of construction known as the ‘Hutting Operation for Raising the School Leaving Age’ (HORSA). The pre-fabricated cement and asbestos structures were intended to be temporary but often survived for many decades, although they were notoriously difficult to insulate and unaltered examples are now rare. The precise date of their arrival in Bridewell Lane alongside Henry Kendall’s Mock Gothic buildings of 1842 is uncertain, but they are likely to have been built between 1947 and 1950. The easternmost hut adjoining the Lane has been considerably altered, with new internal ceilings and PVC windows, but its western counterpart is an exceptionally well preserved example of an increasingly rare building type. It retains most of its original fixtures and fittings, including a full complement of Crittall windows and two impressive sets of shelving consisting of concrete slabs supported by brick piers. These features offer a vivid insight into the utilitarian but durable nature of post-war school buildings, and into the simple but elegant architectural design of the period. The huts are accordingly of considerable historic interest despite the practical difficulties created for modern school managers by their thin walls and lack of roof insulation (S1).