BBC One London Inside Out visits Old Brewery Greenwich

BBC London's Inside Out programme went to Sidell Gibson's Discover Greenwich and had a look behind the scenes of Greenwich Meantime's micro brewery and investigated the history of brewing beer on this site.

Numerous shots of Sidell Gibson's three-storey high brewing tower and the re-furbished, re-waterproofed historic basement vaults including the old well head rediscovered during the project.

Watch it here

Holmes Road School

Sidell Gibson Architects have been appointed by the French Education Property Trust Ltd. to refurbish and extend an existing Victorian school building in North London. The New French School, Kentish Town will include a nursery, primary, and secondary school for 700 pupils. The Grade II listed Holmes Road School was last used by Kingsway Community College and has been lying empty since 2008. The scope of Sidell Gibson's appointment includes conservation and restoration work to the existing slate roofs, lead gutters, brickwork facades and timber sash windows whilst at the same time upgrading the thermal performance of the existing fabric.

As part of the Planning Submission, Sidell Gibson's conservation architecture department researched the original history of the building:

The Holmes Road School is an early example of a Victorian Board School built 1872 – 74 to the designs of the First Board School Architect of London, E.R. Robson 1837 – 1917. Typically, the Board Schools are three-decker buildings – ground, middle with high ceilings, and the second floor with steeply pitched roofs. Infants at ground level, Boys on the first floor, with Girls on the second floor. Board Schools introduced separate classrooms for different age groups, when before, classes were held in one large single space or hall. Each floor had six classrooms arranged on three sides of a large central space or hall. The first floor included the school hall rising up one and a half storeys with a gallery on one side to give access to the Girls’ classrooms. Above the hall was the Girls’ covered play area. The Board School came to have long school rooms with windows in the end walls and in the centre of long external walls, to bring light to desks from the side rather than from the front and back. This resulted in large areas of blank walls with high window cills to stop children looking out of windows during classes. 1,200 children was the average size of these schools and with no playground or trees owing to the tight constraints of the sites that were compulsorily purchased resulting in wholesale demolition of houses such as at Holmes Road.

The school site that now forms part of the Inkerman Conservation Area on its northern edge along Holmes Road, as we see it today, was built following the Crimean War where streets were named after prominent battles – Alma, Inkerman, and its personalities – Raglan. As a result of the 1870 Education Act, Board Schools were established to provide new schools paid through the local rates. Robson’s Holmes Road School was designed as a response to the tight constraints of the site available to him at the time after a number of Victorian houses were compulsorily purchased during successive periods, along Holmes Road, then called Mansfield Place, Willes Road and Cathcart Street. During Robson’s time, his school was hidden by houses on the south side and was not intended to be seen, therefore, the setting and grouping of the buildings are not original to 1874, but are from a later period after further houses were compulsorily purchased and demolished to form the playground. The playground itself is therefore not original to the school.

After the First World War, in 1923 the school opened after school hours for evening classes as a Community Centre for Education. In 1924, again after normal school hours, it was a venue for the Kentish Town Camera Club and Weightlifting Club, then by 1927, held courses as the Junior Men's Institute where practical skills were taught in wood, metalwork, boxing, hygiene and first aid . The last children left in 1931 and the school renamed as the Kentish Town Men's Institute then the Kentish Town & East Hampstead Institute. During the last war, the buildings were used for Local Civil Defence, the RAF Volunteer Reserve and A.R.P (Air Raid Precautions) Training, and in 1940, was requisitioned by the Meals Service for Home Guard Training and as a Rest Centre. The front iron railings were removed in 1942 as part of the war effort - and towards the end of the war, sections of the buildings on the first floor, was taken over by Camden School for Girls, the Junior School and first year seniors remaining there until 1949. By 1956 the 45 separate Men's and Women's Institutes in London were reorganised into 33 mixed Adult Education Institutes, each with between 3,000 and 4,000 students and usually five branches based in secondary schools so that residents should not be further than half a mile away from classes. The Holmes Road School became the headquarters of the Kentish Town & East Hampstead Institute, finally becoming the Kingsway College for Adult Education, providing classes in car maintenance, art and dance (pictures below show 1970s dance class and same room today) amongst others.

The Beaney Institute, Canterbury

In many ways The Beaney Institute typifies the requirements of an English Heritage Lottery funded project. The original Grade II Listed Building located in the centre of Canterbury was completed in 1894 for a local benefactor, Dr Beaney. It comprises a museum, art gallery and library. As was the case in the late nineteenth century, this cultural institution contained a number of large discrete public rooms for display and study with almost no other spaces for supporting activities. Over time the building has grown with ad hoc additions, but inevitably, the increasing needs of the community and ambitions of the institution have demanded an overhaul and major redevelopment. Following winning the commission in an OJEU promoted competition, our brief was to upgrade and preserve the Listed fabric, to provide full access for the disabled, to upgrade and extend the gallery spaces to meet twenty first century curatorial and lending requirements, to provide exhibition design and interpretation for the visitor, to extend and improve the lending library spaces, to provide educational spaces for schools and community use, to provide amenities such as café and WCs together with improved back of house accommodation and plant space. These objectives were facilitated by the Council acquisition of a pair of adjoining buildings, which together with the demolition of existing outbuildings in a rear public car park provided the necessary space for a large new extension fronting onto an adjacent road, Best Lane. The proposed plan develops a new fully accessible public entrance off Best Lane and leads through a two and a half storey top lit atrium to a central reception point, which is level with the existing building’s raised ground floor. This reception and new café area is also at the end of the existing main circulation route from the existing High Street entrance off which the new main lift and staircase link the upper levels. The new extension provides additional floor space for the public library at ground floor and enlarged mezzanine space, being spatially connected with light wells and accommodation staircases. Similarly, new gallery space is provided off the central atrium as an extension at the same level as existing galleries. The architectural language of the new build is in contrast to the existing, with the emphasis on articulated exposed structural soffits with integrated lighting and simple finishes within a red brick envelope, whereas the existing comprises heavy mouldings and ornate finishes internally, behind an eclectic and idiosyncratic Victorian Arts and Crafts façade. Sidell Gibson Architects are now preparing for the serious business of the commencement on site in March 2010. Watch this space.