A day house at King’s School in Canterbury by Walters & Cohen occupies a tight site with listed building and archaeological constraints

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Dennis Gilbert

In 2014 architect Walters & Cohen was commissioned by King’s School to design a day house for 75 pupils within its precinct in the centre of Canterbury, Kent. Day houses are a key component in the school’s pastoral and academic structure, providing a base where its non-boarding students can study, relax and socialise.

The project was the result of a space audit of the King’s estate, which suggested that the existing Mitchinson’s day house had outgrown its use and occupied a site that could be better suited to teaching accommodation. The school found a new location for the day house nearby, in a dilapidated grade-two-listed building, the back of a neighbouring shop, and a car park and house at the rear of the site.

The tight site posed several challenges. It was of archaeological importance, containing the remains of a medieval hospice (a Scheduled Ancient Monument), and the listed building carried a blue plaque commemorating racing driver and engineer Count Louis Zborowski (1895-1924), who built a series of four ‘Chitty’ racing cars in the building, the former Bligh Brothers Coachworks. Zborowski, who later died in the Italian Grand Prix at Monza, had inherited the nearby Higham Park Estate at Bridge, and his exploits inspired Ian Fleming’s book ‘Chitty Chitty Bang Bang’. Rather more prosaic considerations included the presence of a sewer running beneath the site, and asbestos.

The day house provides study rooms, a kitchenette, a common room, lockers, and offices for a ‘houseparent’ and staff. In the £4m project, Walters & Cohen retained the listed frontage and timber elements and demolished the derelict back extensions to make way for the new accommodation that occupies to the footprint of the old. The existence of a high boundary wall to the east led to the incorporation of a lightwell to help introduce daylight into the deepest part of the plan, lightening and ventilating the ground-floor study and social areas. Offices for the houseparent and staff are dispersed throughout the house, and a garden room provides a link to the houseparent’s residence so that student support is close at hand throughout the day.

“Mitchinson’s Day House breathes new life into a special but neglected listed building in the heart of Canterbury”, says Cindy Walters of Walters & Cohen. “Pupils and staff have told us how much they love their new day house; the courtyard and skylights bring natural light to every space, use of colour and materials contribute to the calm atmosphere, and the open-plan social spaces help create a sense of community for pupils of all ages.”

Mitchinson’s day house is the latest in a series of projects undertaken by Walters & Cohen at King’s School, an independent day and boarding school which dates back to around 600AD, and is thought to be the world’s oldest continually operating school; it is also the UK’s oldest charity. The architect has also recently completed the first phase of the King’s School Shenzhen International in Nanshan, China, which offers 2-18 year olds a combined Chinese and British curriculum. King’s School has also recently opened The Malthouse, a £40m performance centre in a nineteenth-century maltings building with a 400-seat theatre, drama and dance studios, designed by Tim Ronalds Architects.

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