What do your ex schools look like now?

My Victorian village primary school is now a rather nice house and my secondary school is still going strong - although now twice the size and sound much posher as a high school instead of a sec mod.

My first school is now part of the nearby public school and houses the art department. My next school still exists and hasn't changes much at all.

My well respected grammar school became a comprehensive and lost it's way for a long time. It seems to have found its way again recently.

The state of the art Comprehensive school I went to in 1958 had science blocks, a swimming pool, huge gyms, several assembly halls, a stage for drama, sewing, rooms cookery rooms, tennis courts, extensive playing fields, music rooms and a room with at east 25 typewriters for the aspiring secretaries.

It was completely demolished several years ago and another school built in its place. I think houses were built on the playing fields.

My secondary school is the same. My lovely little primary school has changed into some kind of community centre but the playground and gates are the same. There is now a Morrisons across the road. I feel very nostalgic just looking at the playground and gates. Lots of happy memories.

My primary school became a register office and is now a car park!

My secondary school has not changed - it looked like a cross between a church and a prison and it still looks like a cross between a church and a prison. It is now just a primary school. My primary school has been knocked down and rebuilt using ecologically sound materials - but from a teaching point of view, it was always a poor school, and it is still a poor school.

Google Earth shows me that the Infants' and Junior schools I attended, at Bounds Green in N London, are still there and still operating. What used to be straightforward asphalt playgrounds now have various bushes growing here and there, and there are extended areas with a soccer pitch and so on. The Junior school used to be on the first floor, above a Secondary Modern - I suppose it has the whole building now.

A memory: there were no air raid shelters, and I have a mental image of us as infants being led, hand-in-hand, to sit on the staircases when the alarm went, as they were the parts of a building most likely to survive a bomb - rather pathetic.

Greyduster,

Not too sure about the ecologically sound materials. Also not too sure what ecologically sound means,

There are some wonderful Victorian schools in the area, all red brick and grey stone and solid as a rock. They have outlived a lot of other buildings and will still be standing in another 50 years - hopefully.

My Junior school was destroyed by the NCB in October 1966, girls grammer school was demolished just a few years ago

The very old building got dry rot, so was replaced in 1936 by a modernist design. It's now listed, but has had to expand with ' tasteful ' extensions! x

I am surprised how many schools are still schools.

I am still smiling at vegasmag's ex's boarding school turned into a corset factory.

The asphalt from the playground keeps turning up in our flowers beds and our house hasn't been a school for 30 odd years. As for ecologically sound materials - our walls are made of granite so very warm and about 9 to 12 inches thick. The roof is a different matter!!

My secondary modern school in Romford looks the same but it is now co-ed (the boys' school used to be next door) and the name has been changed.

My best friend from the girls' school I subsequently attended in Sudbury, Suffolk told me in her Christmas letter that our old school is being demolished. We both feel a bit sad about it.

When that happened to our old school, a lot of ex pupils took pictures of as much of it as they could. As soon as they knew.

Falcon bird, it means they have used pre-used, recycled, locally sourced materials in the construction; glue-laminated beams made from reclaimed timber, and recycled newspaper and waste fabric (denim principally) for insulating material. I believe it has a rainwater recycling system for flushing the toilets. It is clad in wood, which was very 'in your face' when it was first built but has now mellowed to a very attractive shade of grey. Unlike the old Victorian Schools, I doubt it will last fifty years.

My secondary school has been demolished. I went to a reunion a few years ago at my Catholic infants and junior school. None of it looked familiar. I'm glad to say all the nuns and brothers had gone so that was a plus.

My infant, junior and high schools are 8433 miles away in South Africa . I know they're still there. I was lucky to go to one school all my life, a co-ed, and I will never forget the thrill of swopping romantic notes with the boys in "the quad" in high school .

The walls over staircase used to be decorated with Zulu shields and spears, my class was on the balcony immediately above the cameraman.

Wow!
My second school had similar flooring, but there the similarity ends!

It had been one of the homes of a wealthy local industrialist, but it was a bit wasted on a load of adolescent philistines. This is the outside, but it's not quite as grand as another of his homes, which definitely wasn't part of our school! This was another building they used as overspill, which, as it had been condemned in the 1930's, was a whole lot less salubrious.

Greyduster, if it doesn't last 50 years, at least most of it will be recycled again. That's the beauty of recycling.
The fuel bills will be nothing like as high as the Victorian school I went to.

The cost of building a school is a lot more than just materials.

Did anyone watch the Restoration Man?
It was about a couple who took four years to turn a Victorian school into a house and business, using reclaimed everything, solar roofing and other environmentally useful products. They have turned it into a business to teach others how to be environmentally friendly in house renovation.
An excellent programme, well worth watching.

Very enigmatic, soontobe. My husband designed a few schools in his career.