“When you take on a project like this, you need to dig in, adopt a wartime
mentality and be prepared to make camp inside the building,” she declares.
“I’m in my mid-fifties, this is the place I want to live for the rest of my
life and if it takes five years to get it right, so be it.”
Even hard-headed developers have to play the long game when it comes to school
conversions. Take the Barnsbury Place project in London’s Islington, where a
disused Edwardian school has been turned into 80 apartments, currently on
the market with Savills for £570,000 upwards (two-bedroom) and £585,000
(three-bedroom).
It would have been far easier for the developers to knock the place down and
start from scratch. Instead they had to remove all the original 1912 tiles
from the roof, lower countless steel frames through the rafters by crane,
and then put all the original tiles back once the structural work was done.
“We spent £2 million more on the building work than we planned,” says Killian
Hurley, the founder of the developers, Mount Anvil. “On the other hand, that
£2 million probably added £4 million to our bottom line.”
The fact is that people like to live in old schools and are prepared to pay
more. It’s not hard to see why.
“The Victorians built their schools to last,” says Dr Ian Dungavell, the
director of the Victorian Society. “Solid woodblock flooring, good acoustic
insulation, high ceilings and tall windows to maximise light. Plain but
substantial structures.”
Many schools retain their original charm. The former Jews’ Free School in Soho
now houses 10 upmarket, split-level apartments behind its Grade II listed
exterior. Guy Stevenson, who has lived there for 10 years, says: “This
building has got tremendous character, a real sense of community past and
present.”
“Every time you climb the stairs here, you feel the history,” says Claire
Morgan, who lives in a converted Wesleyan Sunday School at Great Gonerby, in
Lincolnshire. “What’s more, lots of the people in the village remember
coming here as children.”
And that is a feature to which the converted-school owner must become
accustomed. “The fact is you are living in a place to which many hundreds of
people have an attachment,” warns Mair. “And not just the pupils, but their
parents, siblings, aunts, uncles and grandparents, too.
“At my previous home, we were forever having people wanting to look around. If
we said it wasn’t convenient, they’d get quite shirty, telling us how they
ought to have a right to visit their old school. One of them even freaked
out when he found himself outside what had once been the headmaster’s door.”
But whereas past pupils might well associate their old school with dread and
discomfort, the latter-day owners have a cosier time.
Those who bought into shared-ownership flats at Mary Datchelor House, a
converted school in Camberwell Green, south London, get all the daylight
that comes through tall windows, but none of the draughts. The old panes
(1889) have been removed, double-glazed and painstakingly re-fitted.
Meanwhile, buyers at the Old School House conversion in Chorlton-cum-Hardy,
Manchester, will find their flats come complete with primary-school-sized
coat pegs and benches, plus board dusters hanging on a piece of string.
“These visual allusions are small, but they have a powerful effect,” says the
designer, Jonathan Davidson, of Q2 Architects. “School is a part of
everyone’s history.”
FOR SALE
Great Gonerby, near Grantham, Lincolnshire £180,000
A former village Sunday school, now converted into a handsome three-bedroom
house, full of original features: arched windows, stained glazing and
exposed timbers. Chesterton Humberts, 01476 514514; www.chestertonhumberts.com
Horrabridge, Devon £685,000
Former village school in Dartmoor National Park, built in 1875 and closed
in 1992, now converted into bed-and-breakfast, with owners’ accommodation
and self-contained cottage. It still displays the original bell tower and
bell. Fulfords Country and Waterside, 01392 660007; www.fulfords.co.uk
Ancroft, near Berwick-upon-Tweed £300,000
The Old School House, built in 1858, with slate pitched roof, two bedrooms,
off-street parking and own orchard (plum, cherry, apple and pear trees).
It has retained many of its original period features. Smiths Gore, 01289
333030; www.smithsgore.co.uk
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