No 2 -  Brindley Ford First School

Brindley Ford First School 

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'Schools for the Future? - 

A Lesson from the Past!'

The past few years have seen Stoke-on-Trent City Council launch their ‘Building Schools for the Future’ initiative, a £250million programme to rebuild or refurbish eighteen schools throughout the Potteries between 2011 and 2014. Of these schools, six will become ‘academies’: publicly funded independent local schools that provide free education, schools for pupils of all abilities established by sponsors from business, faith or voluntary groups.

The City Council see the programme as a key element of the regeneration of the Potteries, with the following objectives:

• To improve education for all young people in the city; 

• To raise aspirations;

• To provide a stable educational platform for this and future generations of young people; and

• To provide a safe and friendly environment for all students working and living in Stoke-on-Trent.
  

In the words of the former leader of the City Council, Ross Irving:

“Improving education in the city is key to the regeneration of the area, and it is about far more than buildings. These new schools will give us a platform to move education forward and we must all work together to translate that into better achievement. That will show how education lies at the heart of our efforts to regenerate Stoke-on-Trent. A better qualified workforce will attract better, more diverse employers to the city, with the huge investments that can follow”.

Fine words. And we have to hope that better schools will lead to a “better qualified workforce” which will help to “attract better, more diverse employers”, as at the moment, the only employers that are willing to invest in the Potteries appear to be Tesco, Poundland, and various fast food peddlers.

One of the objectives identified by the City Council as being key to achieving the vision of the Building Schools for the Future programme is “to raise aspirations”. My interpretation of that is to raise aspirations across all aspects of school provision, from the learning environment itself to the standard of teaching received. And I assume that this would also include the design of new school buildings themselves.

So how satisfying are the new schools from an architectural perspective? The new schools may have modern attractive environments, suitable for learning in the early twenty first century, but how well built will they be? Will they be built to last? Or will we simply be looking at another, similar programme in twenty five or thirty years time?

One of the most disappointing aspects of the Building Schools for the Future programme has been the lack of focus on the reuse of historic school buildings throughout the city. The best example is perhaps the planned razing of Brownhills High School, which incorporates the home of John Wood, a locally prominent industrialist, and dates from 1782, therefore some of the oldest built fabric in the city.

Brownhills High School
Originally a girls school 1927-9 
Pevsner noted "incorporating the house of 1782 altered in 1830"

Brownhills the seat of John Wood Esq.
Showing a late Georgian house (1830) - later incorporated in Brownhills Girls School

Computer Generated Image of the new Co-Operative Academy at Brownhills

Should this be a surprise? The Potteries does not have a particularly good track record over the past few decades when it comes to preserving and reusing historic buildings. We only have to look at the continued destruction of our housing stock and the pottery industry’s architectural heritage to recognise that there is a continued and unhealthy obsession with the wrecking ball within the Civic Centre.

When the Government launched the Building Schools for the Future programme, English Heritage published advice and guidance in the form of ‘The Future of Historic School Buildings’, which was intended to help shape appropriate developments. 

I’m not sure how much attention was paid to the English Heritage guidance when the City Council and their development partners drew up their proposals, but given what we have seen to date I would suggest negligible.

It is particularly disappointing when a building has not lost its original purpose, but maybe understandable if a building loses its raison d’être. But does this have to be the case?

There are a number of examples throughout the Potteries where former school buildings may have lost their original purpose, but have found a new lease of life thanks to some creative thinking and an appreciation of the asset. 

One example that immediately springs to life is the former St James’ National School on Webberley Lane in Longton, originally built in 1836 on land donated by the Duke of Sutherland, but refurbished and converted to offices and studios as part of the Hothouse initiative, and plays host to some of the city’s most innovative and creative businesses.

Looking north-east along School Lane (later Webberley Lane) to St. James's Church. Longton Church of England School, built in 1836, is on the left.

Stoke-on-Trent Archives, Lovatt Collection c.1907-1914

Plan of St.James National School - created in 1982 during the 
Stoke-on-Trent Historic Building Survey © HMSO

Staffordshire Past Track

Hothouse (The Centre for Ceramic Design), 
Webberley Lane, Longton

Brindley Ford First School

Another example can be found right on the northern boundary of the city in Brindley Ford, where the buildings of the former Brindley Ford First School still survive.

 

Brindley Ford has seen much change over the past fifty years or so. Once upon a time it was very self-sufficient mining community, with public houses, a bakery, small shops and other services. 

At the heart of the village was Brindley Ford First school, a late Victorian structure, the main building an imposing presence alongside the A527. A few decades ago, the village saw much demolition in readiness for a road improvement scheme that never happened, and this was followed by the decline of the coal industry, and the subsequent decline of the village. Eventually, the school was closed, but despite the fact that it is no longer in use for educating our children, it is still arguably the most dominant and impressive building in the village.

Brindley Ford First School was closed during the 1980s, but Staffordshire County Council – these were the days before Stoke-on-Trent City Council became a unitary authority and thus responsible for education (perhaps this is why the buildings survive?) – chose not to demolish the buildings, but to ensure they were put to new uses. The Old School Buildings – as the site is now known – has since been the home of a range of small businesses, and a dance studio amongst other things.

The site was also once home to a mill. Charnos – the baby of Charles Nosquith – whose base was in Ilkeston in Derbyshire, opened their factory at the former school site in the early 1990s, and produced knitwear for Marks and Spencer. The majority of the workforce hailed from Biddulph, and I spent around eighteen months working there as a labourer, and met some wonderful people too. As the 1990s drew to a close, Charnos took the decision to end its operations in Brindley Ford, though the lease to the building was taken on by R.H. Lowe of Congleton who took on the Charnos employees and took to manufacturing sportswear, including kit for a number of top football clubs, though this soon came to an end with the sad demise of R.H. Lowe.

Today, the Old School Buildings are still the home to a range of small businesses, such as Page Plus, who are IT systems and software development specialists, and potters, The Classic English China Co.

The reuse of the former Brindley Ford First School provides an important lesson in how historic school buildings could – and should – still play a continuing role in the city’s future. Such buildings are often important local landmarks, and small settlements such as Brindley Ford are often defined by these.

Perhaps it is a class thing? Upper class educational establishments are more often than not preserved, recycled, and generally receive a lot of statutory protection. Compare this with schools and other seats of learning in working class, industrial areas where similar buildings are continually torn down to make way for quite often mediocre replacements. What is wrong with the concept of recycling historic school buildings? Is there a link between educational attainment and the quality of the buildings in which we learn?

Whatever the answer to those questions is, the former Brindley Ford First School continues to be a comforting and reassuring presence in a small semi-rural village facing up to the realities of the modern world.

 D.P. 1st December 2011