Final East Lothian Primary School Extension Completes

With the handover of the Nursery and Games Hall extensions at Pinkie St Peter’s Primary School the East Lothian Primary School programme of works, that also includes extensions to and refurbishment of West Barns Primary School and St Gabriel’s Primary School, has been completed.

The East Lothian Primary School extension and refurbishment programme involves the extension and refurbishment of three existing East Lothian Primary Schools: Pinkie St Peter’s Primary School, St Gabriel’s Primary School, and West Barns Primary School.

The works include at Pinkie St Peter’s and West Barns the relocation of existing nursery provision to new bespoke nursery extensions and at St Gabriel’s the refurbishment of the existing nursery and expansion within the footprint of the existing building, all to meet the Scottish Government’s 1140 hours requirement for increased nursery provision.

The works to each nursery have been designed to meet Scottish Government exemplar guidance and therefore provide a high quality indoor and outdoor play and learning environment. Internally, all the playrooms have vaulted ceilings with a number of varyingly interesting, nurturing and calm spaces, with at Pinkie St Peter’s a first-floor mezzanine space to the main playroom accessed by a dramatic timber clad spiral stair surrounding a circular drum that also accommodates a quiet room. Externally, large sliding glazed screens give access to external play spaces covered by canopies attached to the building that ultimately led onto an enclosed interactive outdoors play garden.

The Games Hall extension provides a new two court Sport Scotland compliant Games Hall with associated storage. This room is flooded with natural light via two large triple glazed frosted cast glass screens with birch faced perforated plywood panels providing both a robust finish and high levels of acoustic attenuation.

“When we originally started work on the East Lothian Nursery projects in 2019, we did not anticipate completing the final project at the end of 2023, however the elongated process has still been a rewarding one with close consultation between design consultants, the East Lothian Council project team and contractor Robertson Construction resulting in buildings that we can all be proud of delivering”.

               - Graham Miller, Associate, jmarchitects

Photography Credit: Paul Zanre Photography

Credit: Graham Miller, jmarchitects