Loughborough College School / Burleigh Community College
"We are all worried and upset when children go wrong, sometimes in spite of careful upbringing but far more often due to bad home conditions or weak, silly parents." Mr C. M. Monro (Headmaster), Now 842 Pupils: Garendon Secondary School, 2nd October 1959.
Schools have never interested me, I´ve been to a few and I´ve always left disappointed by the lack of anything even remotely original inside. Usually, there are remnants of past features but, more often than not, have been replaced by modern teaching equipment and vulgar air conditioning units. However here, we were surprised, there are some great bits and pieces around the site, the gymnasiums are currently being used to store a lot of school work, furniture, and equipment and as we seem to be coming across more and more these days, the rest of the site is left empty. But despite this, the few pieces left in the classrooms and halls made for a good wander around, the architecture, however, is a real winner and it´s worth me writing a report even if I were to include only externals. Very early modern 50s concrete at its best! Even the 60s extensions were worth appreciating.
Thanks must go to @vw_golf_nutter for posting this as a lead, as I say, I wouldn´t have given it a second glance but the external imagery in that post showcased Crittall windows and some top Modernism, hopefully, you´ll agree it paid off!
History
The site can be traced far back to Bartholemew Hickling who was well known within Loughborough during the 17th century, Hickling decided to match the need of a girls´ school with the existing boys' grammar school, in 1690 Hickling opened The Hickling School for Girls that continued until 1876. The next 60 years saw the school change from a girls´ school to a boys´ school, to a technical college and then further an arts college until it finally changed its name to Loughborough College School in 1938. In the early 1950s, it was transferred to the Leicestershire Education Committee and was reintroduced as a mixed-gender boarding school, it was at this time, in 1956, that the facility moved to its current location in Thorpe Hill where this building (Block G) and a number of other buildings were built. Just a decade later and an extension was already needed to facilitate more students, in 1964 the Ferrigan building was built on the north end of the site next to Block G. Later, a new Gymnasium was also added onto the West transept of Block G.
The main campus consisted of Blocks K, S, E and G along with a number of sports facilities. In this report, we will be looking at Block G which houses 2 Gymnasiums, a larger hall, the canteen, a number of classrooms including science laboratories, English and Maths and also the Ferrigan Building which housed the drama and Art department in its later years.
In September 2012 the schools in the area merged to create the Charnwood College which is now currently based in Blocks K, S, and E. The facilities shown in this report are currently derelict and they are used only to store old equipment.
From the 1963 prospectus:
"The School, which is maintained by the Leicester County Council, was opened in September 1917, and is a Secondary Grammar School, admitting boys and girls; the present on the roll exceeds 750. It was formerly housed in buildings forming part of the Loughborough College block situated in William Street and Frederick Street and moved in 1956 into excellent modern buildings erected near Ashby Road on Thorpe Hill to the west of Loughborough town: these new buildings contain fine specialist rooms, workshops, laboratories, and dining facilities, where liberal amenities have been provided."
During 2016, the site was revealed as a target for a columbine inspired school massacre to be carried out by Michael Piggin, thankful he was caught and his arsenal of weapons found in his home was destroyed. "His bedroom floor was filled with knives, air guns, a machete, and a crossbow, while a Nazi swastika flag took pride of place on his wall. Piggin built pipe bombs, smoke grenades and improvised explosives in his bedroom and tested Molotov cocktails behind a local leisure centre. Judge Barker said at the time: ‘Cases of this type are fortunately rare but are of great concern to the public and normally attract long custodial sentences." 8th April 2016, Daily Mail
Prior to the merger, these facilities received an outstanding report from Ofsted, currently, the Charnwood College is underperforming and there are now plans to reuse these buildings as part of a new Primary school.
For further reading a more concise history, this book looks like a good read. https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/095019770X/?tag=networkmechan-21 (ISBN-13: 978-0950197708)
The Explore
The 2 buildings I visited (along with Spider Monkey and a non–member) gave such a vast sense of space, Modernist architecture was all about space and light and here, with only minimal modernisation and no false walls to cramp a visitor in, you can really see why they were building public buildings the way they did. The entrance and canteen opens up fantastically as you walk in, and those concrete stairs with the ornate handrails decorate each stairwell with serious finesse, the upper floors are so well lit from each side it gives an incredible sense of space, much more room in each classroom than I remember having when I was at school. The hall has these huge lights that came on with a great thud as the starter kicks in, they need a good 20 minutes to warm up but unfortunately, we didn´t want to make it too obvious that were there so no pics of that. The gymnasiums, one original to the 50s and the other a later extension, were also remarkably clean and fairly interesting. Overall we didn´t run into any problems here and I´d say it paid off pretty well, the place has some great history and it makes for a good change to see a nice original mid-century school for once without any awful computer rooms and dire re–fittings if a little empty. I hope you enjoy the read and pictures!
Pictures
A couple snaps, a few rooms had power so lighting was not an issue for once, some nice textures and tones around even if most of the rooms had been repainted throughout the years. I don´t need to warn you about my overly linear composition and pretty crass exposure times at this point. Recently with sites like this, I´ve had a total laziness when it comes to getting a tripod out and arguably this makes for very Slayaaaa – esque photography
(whether that´s good or bad, you can decide), regularly I feel like an absolute mong waving around a tripod in a place like this when I could just whack it on to Auto and be done with a slightly ISO´d image in a fraction of the time. I´ll save the tripod for more trying times in the coming winter now the clocks have lept back. Enjoy!
Looking at the North side of Block G from the playground
Looking towards the Eastside with the main entrance to Block G leading into the canteen
The central stairwell from the East
Looking South–West from the 2nd floor North transept
Looking North from above the main hall, centre frame is the kitchen, to the right is the Ferrigan building and to the left is the view over Loughborough
Looking across the now cluttered canteen
The stairs from the groundfloor
And again from the first floor
The entrance to the main hall
The more modern of the two gyms
The older of the two
Here we found lots of clutter, old school projects, furniture and even a robot, but amongst the piles were some really old documents, photographs and registers dating back to the 19th century that should really be in an archive.
The courtyard
The main corridor that leads from the North to the South of Block G
Writing slopes off the main corridor
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