Amid the labour involved in the erection of a hundred new school-houses, this volume would certainly not have been undertaken except from a sense of its imperative necessity, as urged from many different sides. My principal motive for undertaking it arose from the singular want of English works on school-planning, and the circumstance that the subject had not previously been regarded by architects as possessing much importance. My professional connection with the School Board for London having made me the instrument of new developments in the planning of Elementary Schools, and afforded opportunities of a kind never before enjoyed by any one, seemed to carry with it a kind of duty. The appearance, in the public prints, however, of descriptions and illustrations of new school-buildings utterly unsuited to their purpose, became the determining reason.
These pages cannot fail to be full of imperfection, as they were written in the spare moments of the evening, by one who is in no sense a literary man.
