What do your ex schools look like now?

I am surprised how many of the schools are still schools.

Bit disconcerting though Fili, when lots of things have changed.

DD1's husband's school looks somewhat like his parents in law's home!

My primary school is a large block of flats but the secondary is exactly as it was.

More or less exactly the same, the secondary school has a new sports' hall.

My old school exists, pretty much unchanged. It was a very old building to start with, apart from the science wing and the school hall, and the rose garden was replaced with a sixth form block. The uniform however is lovely. I wouldn't mind wearing it now.

Too much changed all around. Sometimes I even do not recognise places where i grown up.

My primary school is a pine furniture shop which is celebrating its 25th year! My Dad was the head and when he retired the school closed, sadly.
My grammar school looks exactly the same, it's a very old one. Main difference is it's now co-ed and independent.

You are welcome annsixty.

Lovely about the photo of your Father

What a lovely and nostalgic hour I have just had. Thank you so much*soon*. I decided to google my schools (3) and was led to a website all about the village I grew up in. Some of the info and pictures went back many years. Imagine my delight when I came across a photograph of my Father in the Bowls team taken in the 1940's. He died when I was 11 in 1949and although I do have some photographs that one is now online for anyone to see.
I found that my first school is still there and my junior school integrated into it and my Grammar school which was a beautiful building had stood empty for some time and has now been demolished but some lovely panels and other things were saved.

In the winter at Infant School, the bottles of milk were thawed out next to the open fire. Quite often the bottles would explode!!

We all liked it when we had a bottle of frozen milk because it tasted like ice-cream

My infants school had long verandahs, with a roof but the sides were open to the elements, with the classrooms off them.
The milk crates were left on the verandahs so caught the sun in the summer and in the winter were left to freeze. I remember when I was milk monitor trying to jam the straws through the frozen tops of the milk which had risen up out of the bottles.

Infants school long gone, houses there now.

Junior school, still standing with modern additions and the railings dividing the boys and girls playground have been removed. Hopefully the toilets are inside the building now. The milk was indeed kept nice and cosy next to the radiator, I never drank mine I always swapped with the boy who sat behind me, my full bottle for his empty one. I had a look on the school website and there are only 100 more children in the whole school now than were in the fourth year when I was there, 'baby boomers'!

Grammar school was situated in a beautiful 19th century country house, it had a 'carbuncle' added in the sixties which I don't think planning would be happy with today. It is now a thriving comp. with boys and girls not just genteel young ladies.

What? No radiators to stand the milk crate by? My abiding memory of Infants and Junior schools is ghastly warm milk, and feeling nauseated...

Why the stuff always ended up stacked by a radiator I do not know.

My first school, now long gone had coal fires in the classrooms. It was very cosy but of course the smoke polluted the air. We were innocent of such things then. I remember the dreadful fogs caused by burning so much coal.

It will be interesting to see how long the environmentally friendly buildings last. In my area such a school has been built to replace the old Victorian school which is now luxury flats. The school was full of beautiful tiling, wood block floors and huge radiators - I expect they have all become "features."

My old house was bought by a young couple who set about knocking down walls and restoring the house to some of its Victorian glory keeping the little Victorian fireplaces in the bedrooms and other features.

I was so pleased that the house was being kept going in this way. It was built in I think 1896!!! and was part of a long line of Victorian town houses.

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

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.

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

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.

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.

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

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

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 .

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.

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.

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.