Misplaced Pages

This is an old revision of this page, as edited by Wlmmcf (talk | contribs) at 20:56, 12 September 2011 (lots of it is untrue so as this page can’t be trusted it should be deleted.). The present address (URL) is a permanent link to this revision, which may differ significantly from the current revision.

Kesgrave Hall School was a boys' Boarding school in Kesgrave, England. It was the fourth school to be based at Kesgrave Hall, opening in 1976. The school closed in 1993, but a new school opened there immediately afterward, with many of the same staff and faculty.

Founding

Kesgrave Hall School was founded by teachers from a boys' junior boarding school, Heanton in Devon. The teachers found that boys from that school were ill-served by their secondary schools. The school's prospectus, which was still in use in the late 1980s, decried the use of children as "educational guinea-pigs" and assured that the school preferred to rely on "tried-and-tested old-fashioned methods".

As with Heanton, Kesgrave Hall was established for boys with a strong academic ability but with perceived emotional or behavioural problems. It had a strong academic focus, but also taught vocational subjects such as woodwork.

Headmasters and layout

The school had four headmasters: Derek Sheppard from its foundation until July 1984, Michael Smith from then until Easter 1992, Eric Richardson, a long-standing teacher and hitherto deputy headmaster, from then until Easter 1993, and John Williams, another long-standing teacher, from then until the school closed in 1993.

The school facilities were split over many buildings on the site. The main building had two main floors, along with a cellar and a loft as well as a two floor extension. Until 1985, on the ground floor there were two classrooms, a library (off one of the classrooms), an assembly room (leading to the other classroom), the boys' common room, the staff room and offices for the Headmaster and the school secretary along with a kit and stationery store leading to the staff toilets. On one of the walls of the assembly room hung the Honours Boards displaying a list of the boys who achieved O and A-Level (and later GCSE) qualifications.

The first floor housed the bulk of the living quarters for boys which mostly consisted of seven large dormitories, named the Constable, Suffolk, Norfolk, Nelson, Essex, Munnings and Gainsborough rooms (this picture shows the landing, with the Norfolk and Suffolk room entrances visible). Norfolk was used for fifth form (year 11) boys and consisted of eight cubicles with a bed, a wardrobe and a desk in each, with electric sockets; the others were open-plan, with between four and seven beds, a small bedside cabinet per bed and a wardrobe in each.

The loft space was used to store, amongst other items, the boys' suitcases, and was accessed by a set of stairs behind a door opposite the Norfolk dormitory.

The extension joined the Main Building on both floors, on the ground floor, it housed one classroom, the dining room (see picture here), a staff dining room, the kitchen, the Deputy Head's office, laundry, the living accommodation for the caretaker and the main shower and toilet block. On the first floor it consisted of the boys' washing facilities, the medical room, and some staff living quarters. Above the converted fireplace in the dining room was hung the board displaying the names of the Head Boy and Prefects; however the system fell out of use and the board was eventually replaced by the painting as shown in the picture.

The cellar was accessed either via a door opposite the dining room or via a set of outside doors. There were three large rooms and a number of small alcoves. Two of the large rooms were taken up with the boilers and drying room. The other large room had various uses over the years, including a games room, with one of the alcoves housing dart boards, housing a train set, to in later years a shooting gallery. The cellar area was the centre of two fires during the late 1980s. The first, in November 1986, caused considerable damage to the area as well as ground floor Laundry above, along with superficial smoke damage to other parts of the ground floor of the main building. The second fire, in September 1988, was considerably smaller in nature and damage was confided only to the cellar. In both cases the pupils responsible were asked to leave the school.

During the summer of 1985 a number of the rooms on the ground floor of the main building were swapped around. The original assembly room and adjoining classroom were converted into the boys common room, the original common room was converted to the staff room and the original staff room into a classroom (still sporting the nicotine stained ceiling), the staff dining room into the Deputy Head's office and the Deputy Head’s office into the Wardens office. The space at the base of the stairs leading to the school secretary office, was, from then on used for full school assemblies. Into the new enlarged common room was placed a snooker and pool tables, and a television, to be added to, in later years by the boys lockers along one wall which was decorated with a reproduction of Roy Lichtenstein's Whaam! painting (see picture). Even though its use as an assembly room had changed to a common room the Honours Boards still remained.

During the late 1980s and early 1990s some of the staff accommodation on the first floor of the extension was changed to accommodate boys – the Yarmouth and Lowestoft "flats" (amongst others) were double rooms used by sixth-formers and, in 1993, other senior boys. In 1992, the Suffolk room was converted into a fifth-form room and fitted with bunk bed/wardrobe units.

There were two other houses on site. The "white house", which was originally the headmaster's house, became known as Norwich House and provided accommodation for sixth formers. This was also a two storey building, which on the ground floor housed the Sixth Form common room (for use by all sixth formers, not just those living in the house), a dining room and small kitchen and a small staff flat. On the first floor it had of two double and two single rooms, a toilet and a bathroom. The second building was the “bungalow”, which was used by the headmaster and his family.

The Chemistry and Physics Laboratories were situated in a converted stable block with the Art room as an extension on the end (they can be clearly seen in this artist impression for the new hotel on site, the Chemistry Lab second door from the right painted cream, the Physics Lab to the left of that and the art room to the left of that). The biology lab was situated in a prefab, commissioned circa 1987; there were also three small wooden buildings on the terraced incline outside the southern end of the building, used for teaching languages, English, woodwork, technical drawing and RE. One of these was destroyed in a fire in 1991.

The school had a considerable range of sporting facilities for a school of its size, including a rugby field, a cricket pitch and pavilion, part of the cricket pitch doubling up as a football pitch, a small outdoor swimming pool, two tennis courts, a five-a-side football pitch, a gym and some cricket nets. Some of these facilities would see a lot of change in the late 1980s with the cricket pitch being lost to the local gravel pit, the five-a-side football pitch being changed into a half hockey pitch and the gym being knocked down and replaced with one about three times the size.

Closing and aftermath

The school closed in 1993, at a time when a number of similar establishments in the UK were closing. However a new school called Shawe Manor opened immediately afterwards, though run by different owners, the headmaster most of the staff and most of the pupils transferred to the new school.

On 9 November 2007, according to the East Anglian Daily Times, a former teacher, Alan Stancliffe, aged 58 and from Pontefract, was convicted of sexually assaulting a pupil at Kesgrave Hall School in the late 1970s and in 1980. On 6 December of that year, he was jailed for two years and placed on the Sex Offenders' Register for ten. Stancliffe had other convictions for similar behaviour dating from 1982 and 1999 .

See also

List of schools in Suffolk

References

1. "Teacher guilty of sexually abusing pupil". East Anglian Daily Times. 9 November 2007.
2. "Ex-Sex Pest Teacher Jailed". Yorkshire Evening Post. 7 December 2007.

v t e Schools in Suffolk
Secondary	Alde Valley Academy Benjamin Britten Academy Bungay High School Bury St Edmunds County High School Castle Manor Academy Chantry Academy Claydon High School Copleston High School Debenham High School East Bergholt High School East Point Academy Farlingaye High School Felixstowe Academy Hadleigh High School Hartismere School Holbrook Academy Ipswich Academy Kesgrave High School King Edward VI School Mildenhall College Academy Newmarket Academy Northgate High School Ormiston Denes Academy Ormiston Endeavour Academy Ormiston Sudbury Academy Pakefield High School St Alban's RC High School St Benedict's RC School Samuel Ward Academy SET Beccles School SET Saxmundham School Sir John Leman High School Stoke High School Stour Valley Community School Stowmarket High School Stowupland High School Stradbroke High School Thomas Gainsborough School Thomas Mills High School Thurston Community College Westbourne Academy
Independent	Culford School Felixstowe International College Finborough School Framlingham College Ipswich High School Ipswich School Old Buckenham Hall School Orwell Park School Royal Hospital School Saint Felix School St Joseph's College Stoke College Summerhill School Woodbridge School
Special	Ashley School The Bridge School Centre Academy East Anglia
Sixth form & FE colleges	Easton & Otley College Lowestoft College Lowestoft Sixth Form College Suffolk New College One West Suffolk College
Defunct	Amberfield School Alexanders College Felixstowe College Hillcroft Preparatory School Kesgrave Hall School Moreton Hall School Palgrave Academy RNTE Shotley Shi-Tennoji School in UK Sudbury Grammar School Woolverstone Hall School

• Proposed deletion as of 12 September 2011
• Boarding schools in Suffolk
• Independent schools in Suffolk
• Boys' schools in Suffolk
• Educational institutions established in 1976
• 1976 establishments in England