Bedales’ original school hall, the Grade I listed Lupton Hall was designed by Ernest Gimson and built by Old Bedalian Geoffrey Lupton as a hall for plays, concerts, school services and singing in 1911.
It was originally conceived as the first phase of a quadrangle of buildings to include a library, laboratories and a gym. However, due to the intervention of the First World War, after the completion of the Lupton Hall, the Memorial Library (built in 1921) was the only other building in the project to come to fruition.
With white-painted brickwork walls, solid oak benches and a main aisle floored with large quarry tiles, the Lupton Hall sets itself apart from other school halls, with none of the conventional decorative elements – such as panelling, ornate plasterwork, or portraits of the headmasters – that you may expect to see in school halls. It was restored by Richard Griffiths Architects in 2017 as a dedicated hall for music and as a lecture hall.
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History of the Lupton Hall
A new hall in 1911 for plays, concerts, school services and singing, the Lupton Hall was designed by Ernest Gimson as the first part of a proposed quadrangle to include a library, laboratories and a gym, and built by Geoffrey Lupton.
Read more about the history of the Lupton Hall in an article by Old Bedalian Jane Kirby (1974-79, staff, 2008-19) here.
Restoration of the Lupton Hall
Untouched and almost unused for very nearly 30 years, we approached one of the country’s leading conservation architects Richard Griffiths to restore the Lupton Hall to something like its original splendour. After close study of the drawings and photographs of the Lupton Hall in its first decades, plans were put together which were executed over the summer of 2017.
Read more about the restoration of the Lupton Hall in an article by Old Bedalian and Bedales Governor Anna Keay (1987-92, Governor, 2013-2022) here.