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Summary

Description

Steele & Balfour, 1894. 3-storey over basement, 12-bay (arranged 3-6-3), large, symmetrical, square-plan, plain classical primary school with good interior scheme (including integrated playground to basement), set at centre of late 19th and early 20th century tenement development. Coursed red sandstone rubble, banded red sandstone ashlar to ground floor, coursed bull-faced red sandstone to basement. Slightly advanced quadrants to corners, paired engaged columns to 6-bay central section. Segmental arched openings to basement, cill and band courses; raised carved lettering 'GOVAN PARISH SCHOOL BOARD' and corniced cill course between 1st and 2nd floors. Corniced and bracketed eaves course. Bull-faced stone boys, girls and infants entrance porches to side (E and W) elevations with stone stairs and round arched parapets. Later single storey red sandstone ashlar toilet blocks (1970s) extending from porches. Small square stair windows to E & W. Basement plant room services to N at basement level, central advanced boiler stack.

Predominantly plate glass in timber sash and case windows, timber casement and fixed windows to stairs. Pitched and piended slate roofs; terracotta ridge tiles and finials; corniced wallhead stacks.

INTERIOR: original plan in tact with glazed tiled stairwells and cloakrooms at landings to E and W; large class rooms predominantly set to N and S of plan, glazed and panelled timber doors, scrolled timber detail to fanlights. Triple-height central hall with deep consoled balconies to N and S, pair of plain shafted Doric columns to E and W at each floor, formerly open circulation space overlooking hall (now engaged in later fireproofing wall scheme, circa 1970s); decorative cast-iron baluster railings, finialled newel posts; elaborate hammerbeam roof springing from corniced corbels, continuous glazing to roof, moulded and dentilled cornicing. Extensive covered playground area to basement (formerly open air, later timber doorways to arched openings) with cast-iron Doric supporting columns and I-section rolled steel beams to supporting upper floors. Caretakers cottage to NE of plan at basement level.

BOUNDARY WALLS AND GATEPIERS: low coped snecked bull-faced rubble boundary walls surrounding site (higher walls to N as site gradually slopes to S from Highburgh Road); square-plan pyramidal capped piers at regular intervals; entrance gatepiers to S. Low coped wall dividing boys' and girls' playgrounds to S. Railings date post World War II.

Statement of Special Interest

A good example of large post-1872 Education Act primary school with imposing interior scheme, including an unusual basement level covered playground area. At the time of construction, Dowanhill School was the most costly of all the schools erected by the Govan Parish School Board and was built to accommodate over 1,500 scholars. Set on ground formerly owned by the Dowanhill Estate Company, this school preceeded the building of a fine set of Glasgow-style tenements which now surround the large site along neighbouring streets, forming a neighbourhood setpiece.

Henry Bell Wesley Steele (1852-1902) and Andrew Balfour (1863-1948) formed a partnership in 1889, after the building of the competition winning Largs Parish Church (1889). Balfour, formerly an assistant in the important Glasgow practice of John Burnet & Son, was probably responsible for the design of Dowanhill School as he was regarded as the principal designer in the firm. The practice specialised in churches and schools and designed a number of schools in Glasgow during the 1890s.

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