Description of Historic Place

Clayton Elementary School is a two-storey, side-gabled Arts and Crafts-inspired schoolhouse with banked windows and a central entryway. The 1921 school is located in front of a newer school building on a prominent site on the west side of 184 Street near 76 Avenue in Surrey.

Heritage Value

The heritage value of Clayton Elementary School lies in its physical location on a property that has been continuously used as a school site since 1891. Numerous schools were opened early in Surrey's history, reflecting the importance of education in the district. The first school in the Clayton area was a one-room log cabin built by a homesteader in the 1870s across the road from the current school. In 1891, the Department of Land and Works designed a standard one-room school across the street from the log cabin. A new two-room schoolhouse was erected at the same site in 1921. Although the 1891 building was later demolished, the 1921 structure remains in use as a school today, and is connected to a larger, more modern school building located directly behind it.

Clayton Elementary School is also valued as an illustration of the standardized Arts and Crafts style of school design that typified schools in Surrey and across British Columbia during this time, as seen in its prominent regular rectangular massing, side-gabled roof with exposed rafters, central stairway and ubiquitous banked wood windows that let ample light into the classroom.

Source: City of Surrey Planning Department

Character-Defining Elements

Key elements that define the heritage character of the Clayton Elementary School include its:
- prominent location on the west side of 184 Street in the Clayton neighbourhood
- institutional form, scale and massing as expressed by its two-storey height, full-height basement, symmetrical rectangular plan, central front entry and side-gabled roof with bargeboards and exposed rafters
- wood-frame construction, with original doubled bevelled siding under later stucco and original cedar shingle roof covered by later duroid shingles
- windows including banked symmetrical wooden sash windows with awning windows at the base and double-hung, 4-over-4 wooden frame windows with horns at the rear
- original interior features, such as wooden window and door trim and original room configuration
- associated landscape features, such as grassed schoolyard in the rear and perimeter plantings including a row of poplars
- continuous use of the property as a school site since 1891