Hello everyone!
Today I'm teaming up with Casi and Joe, two very talented humans who do a bit of urbex. We'd actually been talking about teaming up for some time, but they've done that thing humans do where they shoot their DNA into each other and harvest the outcome, and on top of running their own tattoo business, it's very rare that they get time off to come on crazy adventures with me. Originally we set out for something else, but alas, we couldn't get in. But no matter, because shortly after we spotted this derelict school.
I quietly regard Casi and Joe as evidence that my life is a TV show. I mean, I've shared a small market town with these two for a decade and I'd somehow never met them, nor heard of them until relatively recently, and ever since that day, I see them everywhere. It's almost as if they're new cast members.
No complaints, of course.
If you prefer videos over pictures, then thats okay, Joe has filmed the location for his Youtube channel, which I'll embed here.
What I also recommend you do is take a look at their tattoo business and be amazed. If you want an awesome tattoo, they're definitely a great choice. And I understand they've recently employed a piercist too. Is "Piercist" a technical term? What about Piercer? Piercenator? Fuck it, let's go with Piercenator. Go give their page a like.
Now onto the school itself... It was an accidental discovery, but one I quickly fell in love with. Usually I do censor signs and imagery that give locations away, as a safeguarding measure. However, it's going to be hard to hide the fact that this place is in Wales, given that the language is covering huge chunks of every sign. If I censored that you'd just get huge blocks of black covering pictures, and it would look even worse than my pictures usually do. So fuck it, there's Welsh on the sign so we're obviously either in Wales or Patagonia. I won't elaborate on that.
The school, in my opinion, has a rather bland exterior appearance. However, this is far outshone by its historic relevance. It was built specifically to be a girls school in 1939, in a time of austerity just two decades after women had gained the right to vote. So it's not just a school but a symbol of societal progress too.
Large brutalist extentions were added throughout the 1950s and 1960s, including a gym. And then, in 1972, the school had a huge alteration when it opened its doors to male students as well as females. From what I understand there were fierce campaigns to retain its use as a single-sex school, but equality won in the end. Someone at the top must have said "What are we so hung up on kids genitalia for? This isn't Telford."
Anyway, let's check out the interior!
I'll start at this small entrance hall, which has a reception desk next to it, but oddly isn't the real main entrance. It looks like it should be, but it isn't.
Basically, the school closed in 2003 when a number of schools in the area merged into larger schools. Despite this schools closure, it retained use as a temporary site for the other schools while improvements were made to their buildings. That sign on the door saying "Welcome to Community Arts" actually gives the name of one of those schools that were stationed here briefly, but were actually elsewhere.
At a guess I would say that if this building was used as a temporary arts campus by one school, and used for other purposes by another, they may have utilised separate entrances? Perhaps the main one was off-limits for some reason?
The other schools were using the premises until 2006, when the school building finally closed for good.
Behind the reception desk, we still have calendars and other little pieces pinned to the noticeboard, including a 2007 calendar, with the spaces blacked out until the school year was expected to start in September, almost as if they were expecting this building to retain its function.
Evidently there was once security here at some point.
Predictably, the classrooms are pretty samey. All the furniture is long gone. However, they do have one notable relic from a bygone era, and thats blackboards! This obselete means of conveying information via chalk was gradually phased out of the education system during the late 20th and early 21st Century in favour of white boards and marker pens. It gives the classroom a rather dated appearance.
For some reason there's schoolwork stuck to the ceiling.
In 2013 the modern extensions of the school were demolished, but it seems that a local college aspirations for what was left, and they sought to obtain the school for their own productive means. However in 2014 the council killed the deal, seemingly having other plans for it. Those plans weren't really outlined. In fact, the general public display incessant frustration with the local council for its lack of transparency. All anyone really knows is that certain members of the council are very passionate about seeing this building demolished.
This sparked a flurry of protests, and the building was eventually listed as a site of architectural interest, which the council itself then passionately opposed, seeking to get the listed status revoked.
The council understandably want to continue using the land for educational purposes but also insist that the existing building be flattened, under the admittedly bizarre statement that its not fit for 21st century usage. This seems to be the repeated statement- "We want to provide 21st century education." They say it over and over again. And it's bizarre because, the building has had 21st Century usage. It's fit for purpose!
Admittedly the school does lack wheelchair ramps, and elevators, but I dont think theres anything particularly wrong with it that can't be fixed. It hasnt got an asbestos problem. It's structurally sound. There certainly isnt anything that cant be rectified and I honestly refuse to believe that adding modern touches to a 20th Century building is less costly than demolishing a perfectly good school and building a modern characterless monstrosity in its place that probably won't last thirty years.
However I have seen plans for the site as well as their "feasibility report" which lists a few of the concerns that seemingly led to the decision to demolish the school.
Firstly, one of the alleged reasons the council have given for their decision to demolish the school is the cost of security.
Hmm... That might be believable if I wasn't inside the school with freedom to roam around it indefinitely. I'd say the amount spent on security has been pretty minimal
But it gets better. The council were caught lying about the cost, claiming in 2018 that the site had cost them £1.1 million to maintain from 2015 to 2016. However they later admitted that this was a lie, and that the range of that cost was actually from 2005 to 2016. Some even say that this is an inaccurate figure still, because it includes the cost of demolishing the 1960s Brutalist block.
I know right? People in positions of power lying to the people? Alert the media!
Check out this graffiti. Even vandals have to point out when they're vegan.
The "Feasability report" went on to point out other features of the school that made it unsuitable for 21st Century use, calling to question the buildings staircases. The school has a central hall, with the main stairs at the front, and then additional stairways at the end of each wing, and apparently none of them are compliant with 21st Century standards. I have no idea why. However the plans that I saw did say that this could be rectified by putting glass infils into the existing handrails, so I guess it's something to do with health and safety.
But in spite of these suggestions being put forwards, the council would still rather just flatten the place. This ambition is pursued perhaps a little too passionately by one member of the local council in particular. Rumour has it he has some kind of deep, personal reason for wanting to see the school demolished, but nobody knows what that is.
Perhaps he was once ignored in a chatroom by a former staff member.
The council sought to get the buildings listed status revoked, and they actually succeeded for all of a week, before campaigners managed to get it relisted, saving the building from demolition.
To celebrate saving part of the towns history, a banner was put up along with colourful bunting, which former students and staff alike wrote their fond memories onto.
The council tore the bunting and banner down within 14 hours in the name of "tidying up."
Ironically they then let the school ground become a shanty town.
Check it out! The white board still has writing on it from when the school was open. I'm not sure what the subject here is, or the true context, but it asks for the therapeutic benefits of movement, and lists the students responses- mood enhancement, alternative ways of communicating, laughter and relaxation. Some of the answers are pretty vague and make me wonder what the context was.
Further down it says "What different ways can we use movement?" and among the sensible answers such as dance, mime, drama, etc, it says "parachute."
How weird to think that the students who took part in this discussion might well be in their late twenties now, but that one singular day at school has been frozen in time.
It looks as though they made stained glass during some of the art courses, which is pretty awesome.
Now, onto the shanty town that I mentioned.
From what I understand in 2017 a few homeless ex-convicts put up a few tents on the school ground. They'd got out of prison and found that they had nothing. It seemed that most of them were nice enough, simply suffering for their bad decisions and addicted to drugs, but lacking the support they needed upon leaving prison. As such a few were resorting to crime to feed their habits. Due to the moral complications over how to help these people, it soon attracted media attention which in turn attracted more residents to the shanty town, putting up their tents and forming a little community, much to the disdain of the locals who typically regarded the whole thing as being a mess that the council weren't doing enough about.
As you'd expect, the shanty town eventually turned into one big toilet, with regular drug abuse, littering, public sex, public defecation, and literal firework displays. Quite how a bunch of homeless people in tents obtained fireworks is anyones guess, but some suspect that the council engineered some of the publicity and antisocial behaviour to make the area look filthy, as some kind of petty revenge for the public thwarting the demolition of the school. If any of that is true, I don't know. They certainly didn't do much to help. While the public were complaining about their local neighbourhood being littered with used condoms, drug paraphernalia, and human excrement, in addition to being woken up at night by fireworks, the most the council did to help was provide the shanty town with portaloos.
Now, if only the council had access to a big empty building nearby to accomodate the homeless folks, hmm?
But no, by law the school is not to be used for anything other than an educational facility and so the homeless people remained camped out in tents outside it. In my opinion this is just another case of red tape taking priority over common sense and basic humanity, but what do I know?
Numerous agencies designed to help the homeless urged people not to donate things to them, because a lot of the donated objects were just getting sold for drugs, and the publics goodwill, while well intentioned, was undermining the work being done by the specialists and discouraging the homeless from seeking help from the agencies that do provide specialist support.
I'm not actually sure what solved the shanty town problem. I think they just packed up and left when it started to get a little nippier. All I know is that in the aftermath the council pulled up all of the grass due to it being contaminated, and erected barriers to keep people out.
This appears to be an old fashion design classroom.
Here's an old enrollment notice.
And here are the term dates.
As you can probably guess, most of the media attention has gone towards the publics feud with the council, and the homeless camp, all of which happened after the schools closure. Luckily, those who attended the school, both student and staff, have on occasion given minor testimonies, so one can shine a light on what the school was like when it was still open.
The student body was divided into colour coded forms, such as White, Purple, Yellow, or whatever. I'm not sure if the classification reflects anything such as grades but it probably does. As you can expect from a school, numerous staff members gave the teaching staff an amusing variety of nicknames, the one which pops up the most being Big Bird. The gym teachers get mentioned quite a bit too, mostly for being hot (I know what you're thinking and no, I was never a gym teacher here) but also for the hilarity that they lacked an actual office and so had their weekly meetings in the toilets.
But as funny as those things are, it was the stories of student rebellion that caught my interests and made me chuckle. The female students of the old days allegedly led something of a revolution in regards to school dress code, trying to get the right to wear trousers in the winter instead of the mandatory skirts. At some point a group of students also smuggled alcohol into the school and got drunk to celebrate John Lennons birthday. They were all suspended.
Nuggets like this really bring these old hallways to life, and provide some character. This isnt just some blank ruin. This place meant something to people once. There are several decades worth of stories here.
Paranormal enthusiasts will be happy to hear that the school is allegedly haunted too, although I didnt experience anything.
As of 2006, one of the schools was using this area for drama.
This poster talks more about college facilities at the main campus, which would imply that college students were also using the school in its post-school pre-closure limbo years.
This store room in the drama department is particularly cool, with old posters still covering one of the walls.
The drama hall has this awesome black and orange colour scheme which I love.
I forget what mobiles were even capable of in 2006. Certainly not Facebook or Messenger. Everyone was still harping on about Myspace. You ever try to open someones Myspace profile on a phone from 2006? It took forever! People just glammed up their profiles with all kinds of snazzy HTML, made their profiles take ages to load, and annoyed everyone with it, except Tom, who was just happy to have so many friends.
I can only assume that this would have been the entry area of another school or college utilising the building, given that it looks very receptionish and sits at the opposite side to the other entrance. I doubt any of what's leftover comes from the original school.
Guessing by the art-related newspaper clippings, I'm going to assume this area was last used for art students.
There seems to be more emphasis on the Welsh Language here. Heres how to count to ten in Welsh.
Pro tip- to best pronounce "Chwech" it helps if you're choking on something at the time.
On this wall is the name of that village in Anglesey which is famous for having the longest name in all of Europe, with 58 characters and 19 syllables. Its not the longest location name in the whole world, but I'm pretty sure it's in the top three.
To best pronounce it, it's also recommended to be choking on something.
Whilst having a seizure.
Given that Welsh names often derive from actual descriptions like "Church next to a waterfall" and "Hill by a bridge" and "That hedge where Dafydd had a wee," I decided to look into what this long village name actually means. During this research I discovered that the name was actually made long on purpose in 1869 solely for publicity. Prior to this it had a shorter name which translated roughly to "Church of St Mary by the pool of white hazels."
They then decided that the pool of white hazels just didn't sound exciting enough, so they lengthened the name by adding everything else that the church was next. The end result literally translates to "Church of St Mary by the pool of white hazels near the rapid whirlpool next to the church of St Tysilio of the red cave."
It's a mouthful in English as well as in Welsh.
Heres a sign of English and Welsh phrases.
A pronounciation guide would be useful, seeing as anyone who has no knowledge of Welsh letters is going to completely butcher every phrase on the list.
Theres actual mushrooms growing in these toilets.
Of course they're still in better condition than the toilets in some pubs and clubs.
This room still has desks in it.
Some of the blackboards in the school have predictably become subject to a little lighthearted humour, which is only natural given that the school is so easy to get into. But unlike most places that suffer graffiti, this doesnt seem to suffer from the usual doodles of reproductive organs. Instead some mild creativity has gone into it, and given the school setting, much of it parodies education. Here we have a timeline of the world, where 10,000,000BC is labelled with "Its feckin hot" and Year Zero is labelled with "Jesus Christ was here, learning wood work."
Heres the stairway at the end of the other wing, opposite the first one.
The upstairs is considerably messier.
Here the upstairs hallway comes to an abrupt end, blocked with a sheet of metal. This would have once carried on to the modern extension, where one would find the gym, cafeteria and other classrooms. Now, if the metal sheet was removed, the hall would lead to a sudden drop.
This poor bird must have been roosting in here when the windows and exposed former hallways were covered. Unable to escape it starved to death.
Theres a notice board up here that makes mention of the Duke of Edinburgh award, a self-improvement program for young people, the tasks of which revolve around what is perceived to be the six declines of modern youth- Memory, Initiative, Fitness, Skill, Self Discipline and Compassion. The program usually results in copious amounts of photos of young people hiking up mountains and whatnot.
By far the most curious part of the school was this random hallway that had at one point been boarded up, isolated from the rest of the building. It set my imagination off. Someone had once tried to keep people out while retaining use of the rest of the school. But then at some point someone else had torn the board off to get in.
Naturally I couldn't help but take a look. The entrance to the hallway hadn't just been boarded up but also fitted with a wooden cross beam, almost as if someone fully intended to install a proper wall at some point.
Down that hall was this seriously dilapidated classroom, in a larger state of disrepair than the others. Perhaps its poor condition was the reason for it getting shut off.
Perhaps this was where the council locked up those who opposed their master plan...
Alas, reality is seldom as dark as my imagination. Onto the rest of the school...
Curiously throughout the upper floor, the parquet flooring has been pulled up piece by piece and stacked neatly at the side of the room. It's almost as if someone began removing it but then stopped. This is worth mentioning because according to the plans I saw, they were undesirable and considered unfit for a 21st Century school, but also listed as one of the features of the school that people wanted preserved.
To
me it just sounds like the powers-that-be are nitpicking. I mean how is
a floor unsuitable for an educational facility? It seems to me that the
council are finding fault with the features people want preserved in a
silly attempt to support their unwillingness to do anything with the
building.
There's some old schoolwork on the blackboard, looking somewhat likes Maths.
The alphabet above the blackboard is curious. It suggests that this school provided education for primary school students. To my knowledge this wasnt the case. You seldom hear stories of primary school students smuggling alcohol onto the premises, and when you do, its typically not the kind of school that people actively campaign to save from demolition. My guess is that during the post-closure era a Primary school made use of it temporarily.
Classwork: how to give head.
The brickwork around the hallways is also one of the features that
people want preserved, and similarly to the parquet flooring, it seems
that this is not compliant with 21st Century school design, considered
too "imposing" for small children.
In the nicest way possible- What the fuck are they on about?
I do love this particular piece of graffiti. Someone has written "Raa!" in large letters and someone has responded with "Raa back," in calmer, smaller font.
There's still some maths on this blackboard too.
Here's an old notice descriping the lunch time procedure.
And look! The school has a newsletter from 2005.
Here it says 9/11 was an inside job. I've seen this written on quite a few derelict locations. Denbigh Mental Asylum springs to mind but that wasnt the first occurrence. I wonder if it's the same person.
Here it says "AJ Cobra, you are a massive cunt! Go fucking commit. With love T.T."
I just love the handwriting.
Heres some vandalism from 2005 by Kim and Nat, likely scrawled when the school reopened as a temporary campus for other schools.
Someone here has written a response to other blackboard scrawling with the line "How cute, grow up."
It seems that some of the staff had a coffee rota put in place for some reason.
More Stephen King references. It's an odd contrast to some of the other stuff written on the boards. One moment AJ Cobra is being called a cunt in lovely handwriting, and the next someone is making references to popular novel.
And with this stairway we've done both upstairs and downstairs wings. But by far the real gem is the double stairway at the front of the building, at the main entrance. It's quite spectacular.
As mentioned, I've seen the original plans for returning the building back to educational use, and it seems that they dont have any plans at all for this portion of the school. The flooring, the stairways, and the walls are all said to be non-compliant with 21st Century school standards but also said to be the parts of the building most worth preserving, and so the plan said that this part of the school would simply not be used. The wings and the central hall would be renovated while this area would be untouched. A new extension was said to be planned for one of the wings to serve as a new main entrance.
It seems a massive waste, and as I said before, petty on the part of the council, being difficult for no other reason than their bitterness over the demolition being thwarted. Theres absolutely nothing wrong with this building.
Moving on to our final stop, the central hall. This was by far my favourite area in the entire building.
The seats are still here, overlooking the hall.
Theres still gum on the bottom of some of these seats. Who stuck that there? And in what decade?
The hall itself was huge, with a stage at the far end. It was here that the school would hold its events. In particular I read some fond memories of the Sixth Form dance of 1963, which was said to be one of the schools most successful events. A local band called The Renegades performed on this stage, they themselves being students from the nearby boys school, and quite a hit among the locality back in the day. The bands keyboarder was especially notorious for being quite a quirky character. He had, in 1956, caused chaos as a first year student by rebeling against the allocated seating rules in the school cafeteria, making a bad first impression on a fellow student who went on to play drums in the same band when it formed in 1959. The drummer was allegedly horrified when the other bandmates invited this kid to be the keyboard player, but they soon became friends. He ended up becoming an actor, in numerous stage productions and a few appearances on TV, mostly in adverts.
Somehow during his acting career he came into posession of a genuine, but deactivated hand grenade, which he used as a stage prop. It seems nobody knew he'd kept it though, and when he died in 2011 and his posessions were sorted through, the bomb squad ended up being called out just in case it was live.
It sure is surreal to look at a building and consider all of the people who have been here over the years, and actually put stories to some of them.
The plans that I saw made mention that they wanted to make this into a Nursery, but criticised the ceiling, saying that it was too high for 21st Century students. As far as criticism goes, it's a little ridiculous. Better not take your kids outdoors!
The plans go on to say that the inappropriate ceiling issue could be rectified with a second, fake ceiling which would be installed lower down, but still ensure the preservation of the original.
The hall seems to have been the focal point of every local kid with a marker pen and something to say. I'm going to assume these are people who have been here since it closed, seeing as they mock the schools nonexistent security.
Here's some graffiti from the former students, dated 2003 when the school closed its doors. It wouldn't surprise me if these students left their mark on the last day, knowing that they'd never be coming back.
That's all I've got.
In regards to the schools future, even though I've seen the plans that were drawn up, in 2018 the council announced that they had no plans for the building, still bitter that their demolition plans were thwarted. The council has pretty much just annoyed everyone with inadequate transparency, failing
to outline a decent plan for the site, but simultaneously stopping the
college from utilising the premises, leaving everyone with a big
derelict building thats slowly rotting away. Some suspect that the council are letting it fall gradually into ruin so that in the end there's no other option than to destroy it. They already claim that it will cost too much to fix up, but want to build a primary school for around 480 students on the ground nearby.
On a more productive note, the local football team are looking at getting a 150 year lease on the land. It's still awaiting approval, but if the plan goes ahead, they could begin training there in 2020.As always the council have something stupid to say on the matter, saying that relocating the football club will make their previous training ground vacant for their proposed new primary school.
At this point it's pretty clear that the council are just doing things as awkwardly and long winded as possible just to avoid doing the obvious. Just fix up the old school!
Anyway, that's all I've got. Share the blog where you want. Next time I'll be under the streets of Shrewsbury checking out some archaeological awesomeness. I know, I said in another blog that I'd be doing a pub after this one, but after the last three pubs, I'm all pubbed out. So I'll be checking out another school, and then I have another plan for my Shrewsbury blog to celebrate almost ten years of doing this stuff and not dying. In the meantime, Like my Facebook, Follow my Instagram and Follow my Twitter.
Thanks for reading!
No comments:
Post a Comment