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Report - - King's School: Fence Avenue, Macclesfield (Part 2) - Dec 2020 | Other Sites | 28DaysLater.co.uk

Report - King's School: Fence Avenue, Macclesfield (Part 2) - Dec 2020

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jtza

28DL Regular User
Regular User
King’s School: Fence Avenue

Read @UrbandonedTeam 's part 1 here for the following to make sense: Part 1

After completing the Cumberland Street campus, we set off home and began to look through pictures and history getting clued up on the site and it’s past. It was then that I came across an article detailing more demolition at another King’s site. Initially believing it was about the site we had just visited previously, I only skimmed through before noticing a different street name referenced. A further search pulled more up articles and an external shot of another old building that was different to the one we had just explored, and it inevitably piqued my curiosity. It wasn’t long before I could confirm that another big site was indeed left abandoned due to the recent vacation to a new £60 million campus. This time the site was the girl’s and infant/junior campus.

@UrbandonedTeam covered the overall history of King’s in the previous report and can be found here:

The historic King's School was founded in 1502 within the Church of St Michael and All Angels in Macclesfield. The priest-schoolmaster and free school were to be maintained by an original endowment of £10 a year and seventeen feoffees were appointed. The school was affected by the Chantries Act between 1547 and 1552 when it was re-founded by royal charter and acquired a further endowment of £10 from lands of the dissolved college of St. John the Baptist in Chester. A corporate body of governors was formed with powers to nominate masters, decide salaries and make regulations. It moved numerously over the years, with it's original placement beside the parish church, the former house of Sir John Davenport from 1748 until it reached the position on Cumberland Street where it closed a few months ago.

In 1552, it was re-founded by Edward VI as the 'Free Grammar School of King Edward V1,' moving to it's current location in 1844. A charity commission scheme in 1879 led to integration of the Cumberland Street site and another school, formerly Macclesfield High School, on Fence Avenue, with Cumberland Street teaching boys and Fence Avenue teaching girls and juniors, both known as the King's School. New extensions were added in the 1930s and in 1938, King's School became a public school. This report consists of the boys section of the school's buildings but both lie abandoned.

In 2020, plans were announced to close both establishments to be replaced by a new single site school in Prestbury. The basis of the plans is to fund the construction of the new development by selling the two older schools for housing. After this was granted, in July 2020, King's School left Macclesfield for the first time in 500 years of continuous operation, moving to it's new property in Prestbury. Widely considered as a local landmark, the iconic, independent school and it's additional structures stand at the end of an immaculately kept cricket green in the centre of the town.


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However, the Fence Avenue site has a rich 125-year history in itself. Towards the end of the 19th century, people were becoming aware that girls’ education was becoming neglected. In 1879 the idea for a girls’ school arose. Prior to this, the secretary of the Useful Knowledge Society had implemented reading rooms, evening classes, a library, and a school of art in Macclesfield and King’s School supported this with a donation of £100/yr until the first school for girls of Macclesfield opened in the late 1800s.

During 1902, the Education Act was passed, the girls’ school at Park Green moved to a new purpose-built school on Fence Avenue. Costing £14,500 at the time, the new building was 3 stories tall, designed for 250 senior and junior girls and 30 infants. With state of the art (at the time) design and equipment installed, the school finally opened in 1909 after the Chairman of Cheshire County Council used a gold key granted to him by the Chairman of the Governors. By the time World War I began, the school had reached 300 pupils and a lack of space was becoming an issue. It wasn’t until after the war, in 1922 that the extensions were completed. Further work began in the early 30s where a new dining room was added by 1935. As part of the 1930 Jubilee Celebrations, the girls held a dinner and Cinderella dance. When WW2 began, air raid shelters were dug within the grounds. Sadly, we found no signs of the shelters anywhere on site. The Upper Sixth girls had the job of fire-watching, while the Lower Sixth hung nets on the windows in the school to stop glass splintering when/if bombs were dropped. Post war saw a new Education Act granted and more and more girls were given the chance to win Scholarships to the school. Throughout the 1950s-60s, a new hall, dining room block, “Charter Block”, “Walker Block” were added, and house names changed.

Photo of inside the school during the WW1 period along with tickets to the Cinderella dance.

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Fast forward to the early 90s and the school was forced to close due to “a surplus of places in the country”. The headmaster at King’s School at the time saw this as an opportunity and saved the buildings in 1992 and acted as a new home for the King’s School Girls’ Division. In 1993, the school was ready to open. During the summer of this year, the school moved to a brand new £60 million campus covering 80 acres leaving these sites empty. Similarly, to Cumberland Street, Fence Avenue has had permission granted for 300 new homes, but it could take up to 8 years to build them. Maybe this time buffer will allow some of the historic structures to be preserved.

A slightly more recent photo of pupils stood with the headmaster and headmistress when King’s acquired the school.

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Now onto the actual exploration.

Externals of Fence Avenue.

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After the discovery mentioned at the beginning of the report, we didn’t waste any time getting back over to Macclesfield to check this one out. Joined again by @UrbandonedTeam, @DustySensorPhotography and @huyt.urb, we set off on our planned route. The same security firm monitored this location as the boys’ school so we assumed that our access to the building would be sort of similar. After failing to find access where we thought we could we resulted to walking to the front to an access point we were 100% sure would work. The only issue was the security guard, the new cameras, and sensors. To lure the security guard out of his office, we presented ourselves to the camera. It didn’t take him long to come out looking for us. While he was looking, the 4 of us ran around the site and into the courtyard where he was based. We were able to get into the building through his office while he momentarily vacated it.

Before any internal shots here is an idea of the site. On our run around we passed the DT block and checked for any machinery, nothing of interest presented itself so we moved on.

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Playground and playing courts.

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The Upper Juniors block.

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The Lower Juniors and Infants Block and “Early Years” block (presumably a nursery) which we didn’t get into. Luckily, there was nothing of interest inside here either.

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A side on view of the oldest building on site.

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Finally, onto internals. We headed to the top floor to be as out the way as possible and began shooting. Throughout the explore we saw the guard do numerous patrols and seemed like he was onto us. We later saw him back in his office with his jacket off. He’d clearly given up if he knew we were about.

We began in the art’s classroom. Fence Avenue was almost equally as stripped as Cumberland Street, but the main building offered debatably better features.

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More classrooms were discovered that could have been anything really. The windows in here were the real highlight.

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We moved through the corridors towards the main staircase. Despite being modernised, old plaques celebrating honours of the school were preserved in place.

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Next up, the main staircase, completed with original Victorian architecture. Another plaque could be found before descending into the Modern Foreign Languages Department (MFL) to only find bare classrooms.

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At the other side of the top floor was another staircase with identical design. This led us towards multiple new areas of the site.

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A wall-hanging to celebrate 100 years of girls’ education still hung in this lobby area.

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Next door was the reception. Bare and bland.

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The music department offered a few more interesting areas to see.

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(Slightly blurry, apologies.)

Before heading to the main hall, I got a quick shot of the courtyard through the glass which was going to be impossible to get out and shoot with the security guard back in his office.

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To be continued…
 

jtza

28DL Regular User
Regular User
The main hall was modern, as was the one over at Cumberland Street but still pleasing to see and shoot.

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Before we moved into a separate but connecting building, we had one last thing to see which was the gym.

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Changing rooms.

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A long corridor took us to the Upper Junior block. We had low expectations for this area, but we were soon surprised.

More changing rooms could be found in this block most likely used by the younger pupils that were based over this side of the site before heading down to use the gym.

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Entrance lobby to the block.

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For some odd reason, only labs were present in here. Despite the block being labelled as “Upper Juniors”, it appears that the whole school would have used this area for science as they were the only laboratories on campus.

Corridor on the second floor with chemistry and physics labs leading off.

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Physics Lab.

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“Chemistry 1”.

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Top floor. The banner “King’s for Science” could also be found in the Percyvale Science Building over at the other school building.

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Biology labs.

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These tanks were still full of water from when they were used.

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“Animal Plant Room”.

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Microscopes.

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Various pieces of scientific equipment.

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And that concludes King’s.

Thanks for reading!​
 

Calamity Jane

i see beauty in the unloved, places & things
Regular User
Liking pt 2 . Great entrance. Iron work on the stairs is rather pretty . Well done guys. Like it :thumb
 

pirate

Rum Swigger
28DL Full Member
I like old schools,as Jane said stairways are really ornate

I did laugh at all the tables missing the tops,
Boatyards all over U.K. rush to reclaim the wood when schools close,a lot of my boat is built of old school table tops :D
 

jtza

28DL Regular User
Regular User
I like old schools,as Jane said stairways are really ornate

I did laugh at all the tables missing the tops,
Boatyards all over U.K. rush to reclaim the wood when schools close,a lot of my boat is built of old school table tops :D
Ah cheers, we were wondering why they were missing..
 

chills

Queller of the uprising
Moderator
Not a bad follow up to part 1, definitely a little more to see but a shame it’s still mostly stripped!
 

johnnie

28DL Full Member
28DL Full Member
great photos, i worked on all of kings sites for around twenty years, they were the best clients i ever worked for, the maintenance team were so helpful and i formed a great partnership with them all. i was always fascinated with all of the buildings and their different features from differing eras, i liked the 60s building on the rock block, unfortunately they are now rubble, not seen your Cumberland report so ill head over that way next, by the way, there's also the percivale building facing the back entrance on pownall street, next visit?
 
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