Benthal Primary School, Benthal Road, E5

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This post-war school replaced a London Board School from 1876 that was damaged in the Second World War. Benthal Primary and Junior Schools were built between 1947 and 1967. The infant school that fronts onto Benthal Road, was built in 1947-49 by the London County Council’s Architects’ Department. This group of one-and-a-half-storey buildings are rendered white and designed in a Modernist style. They have flat roofs and little in the way of detailing. The junior school was built in 1966-67. This set of buildings are shaped like Moorish pavilions with distinctive curving roofs. This was the first school designed by Paul Maas of the Greater London Council’s Architects’ Department. Maas designed eight individual buildings each containing a classroom each. The design was inspired by Maas’s four children and his own experiences as a child. The resulting architecture is a very child-centred school. Windows placed at children’s eye levels and scaled to 5-7 year olds. The architect said: ‘I wanted Benthal to feel like a children’s world in which adults were invited’. The resulting school building recalls a set of tents or caves – depending on whether you view it from the exterior or interior. An attractive courtyard was created between the two buildings. The screen wall on Benthal Road has reverse-embossed lettering bearing the inscription ‘BENTHAL PRIMARY SCHOOL’ in a typeface from the period.

Modernist

Post-war (1945-2000)

school

This school is an imaginative complex of buildings from the late 1940s and late 1960s. The 1967 building by Maas cleverly juxtaposes with the earlier 1947 design by the LCC. An overall harmony is created by the low heights of both buildings and the uniform white exteriors. Together they stand out from the surrounding streetscape.