ABSTRACT
St George’s School at Wallasey on the Wirral peninsula is one of the seminal buildings in the development of what is now known as passive solar design. Its clear-cut form, with a steeply sloping monopitch roof rising from a virtually windowless north façade to the top of the 9 m-high solar wall, is a direct expression of the fundamental principles in the exploitation of solar gain to heat a building. 1 , 2 It was not, however, a product of the upsurge of interest in energy-saving design which followed the so-called energy crisis of the early 1970s. Its designer was the assistant borough architect of Wallasey, Emslie A. Morgan, and it was completed in 1961. There was nothing in Morgan’s earlier work which in any way hinted at what he went on to produce at St George’s. And, because he died in 1964, the building has no direct progeny. It stands as a magnificent isolated specimen, detached from any rational process of architectural evolution, but anticipating future developments (Figure 10.1). North elevation. https://s3-euw1-ap-pe-df-pch-content-public-p.s3.eu-west-1.amazonaws.com/9781315024820/877ca205-2c33-478c-b37c-e7e166b04ba5/content/fig10_1_C.jpg" xmlns:xlink="https://www.w3.org/1999/xlink"/>
