The Spencer Building, Worth School, West Sussex

The new Spencer Building at Worth School, set in the Sussex countryside, was designed as the first move of a long-term strategy to redevelop the western part of the school campus. 

Questioning the client’s instinct to locate it on the roadside, Tim Ronalds Architects set the building back into the site, creating the western side of a future quadrangle. Its principal facade now faces east across a landscaped lawn towards the historic performing arts centre, with the sports hall and classroom block to its north and south mooted for future replacement to create a more collegiate and coherent vision for this secondary boarding school.  

It is the long front elevation that states the building’s ambition: generous and deep window openings, set between string course and corniced parapet, break down the solidity of the warm red brickwork into a colonnade of surprising depth. Two entrances are announced by outsized metal doorcases, powder coated in a gold colour – a signature touch of quality that pervades the building.  

By eliminating corridors internally, the building offers a lot for its 1,258m² of floor space. At ground level, three classrooms to the rear are reached through the library, separated from the large multipurpose hall by the entrance foyer. 

The plan repeats at first floor, but with classrooms and smaller seminar rooms accessed via a large study space, and a separate social space, specifically for sixth-formers, all set beneath the raking soffits of a dual-pitched roof. School administrators are dropped into the centre of school life, their transparent glazed offices being attached to the foyers at both ground and first floor. 

The interiors are flooded with daylight, which enhances the warmth of the timber construction. The structure of the walls, floor and roof is of cross-laminated timber (CLT) and glulam beams on a regular and efficient grid. 

Joinery is in pale ash, including bookcases and desks, and floors are laid with oak boards. But it’s the remarkably comfortable acoustics, enhanced by perforated metal ceiling panels, which transform the series of school spaces into ones in which students study with independence, focus and maturity, says the proud head.  

As well as impressively low levels of embodied carbon in construction, the building has ambitious operational credentials. Heating is provided by a biomass district heating system which has eliminated gas from the whole campus, but provision is also made to connect the building to a heat pump in the future. 

The shallow depth of the plan and ample fenestration mean the building can be naturally ventilated, although it has capacity for artificial cooling to make up for the lack in structural mass. Both water use and operational energy are low.  

The Spencer Building has been carefully and beautifully detailed and executed to a very high standard to provide a comfortable, easy and delightful addition that has set the bar for the school’s future plans.