Bacup School (Architectural Competition)

1^st premium Butterworth and Duncan; 2^nd premium A Greenwood; 3^rd premium A Brocklehurst.  Others  Sykes and Evans, Smith and Cross, Holt and Addshead, Hitchin and Prichard

A local competition has just been decided at Bacup. Some little difficulty was incidental to the scheme, owing to the position of the site and its somewhat cramped character, which is in reality too small for all the requirements of the Board of Education to be complied with, so far as the playgrounds are concerned. Bacup is a hilly place in the north‑east of Lancashire, on the outlying slopes of the Pennine Chain, and is consequently entirely devoid of level ground. The streets and buildings range up and down steep gradients, which necessitate sloping playgrounds, the gradients consequently being slippery and dangerous. The Education authority is now being put to the expense of excavating the worst of these playgrounds to a dead level, necessitating the erection of heavy retaining walls, Most of the. competitors did not take these difficulties into consideration in working out their designs. They retained the sloping ground, showed steps to their entrances, and in other ways practically ignored the difficulties of the site, which formed the principal stumbling‑block in the competition to the uninformed; but we should have thought this point ought to have been clearly stated in the conditions.

Messrs. Sykes and Evans, of Manchester, are the authors of a very clever plan, showing the building arranged as a parallelogram, with capital playgrounds, separate entrances for each class of children, as well as for cookery and manual instruction rooms. Unfortunately; the central hall is too small, the corridors are too narrow, and the teachers' rooms overlook the street instead of the playgrounds, which is a bad mistake. [Building News 29 May 1908 page 774].

Reference           Building News 29 May 1908 page 774