Martyrs' Public School

Abstract

East stair, detail

Mackintosh worked with Honeyman & Keppie, (becoming a partner in 1904). Martyrs' School was commissioned in 1895 and is built on the street where Charles Rennie Mackintosh was born. Like many Glasgow board schools, Martyrs' is constructed of red sandstone brought in by rail once the local sandstone quarries became exhausted. The plan conforms to the standard layout, which was governed by the requirement of separate entrances for boys and girls. A top-lit well lights a ground-floor drill hall over which galleries on all sides communicate with the classrooms, which were placed on the outer edges of the building to gain the maximum natural light. Over the hall and staircases exposed wooden rafters and ties are either pinned to the walls by brackets or rest on corbels. Externally the clash of stereotyped and new forms may reflect compromises between Keppie and Mackintosh. Of greater interest are the groups of windows set on a continuous bracketed sill, a concept that is neither unique nor new but is of interest when set against the individual verticality of a staircase pierced by a thermal window below oversailing rafter ends. Now an arts centre run by Glasgow Museums.