Gorse Park Central School Gorse Lane Stretford

In 1924 Percy Howard was instructed to draw up plans for a new school [Builder July - December 1924 Page 71] The school opened in October 1925 and closed on 31 August 1990.

THE GORSE PARK SCHOOL – The new school which the chairman of Stretford Education Committee, Councillor F W Bates, is to open on Saturday is an unusual sort of building. Those who are acquainted with the district round about Manchester will find the nearest comparison in the Barr Hill open-air school, Salford, which was designed especially for children threatened by tubercular diseases, The Gorse Park school, however, is one of the comparatively new “central” schools to which children from elementary schools who can take advantage of an advanced four-year course tending towards technical accomplishment are admitted by competitive examination at the age of eleven.

The school is a long low building with two wings and a tongue flung out to the south-east. It has tall wide windows, not built so high that children cannot see out of them. All round the inner side of the “E” facing towards the morning sun is a roofed verandah which takes the place of the central corridor in the older type of school. The classrooms lie directly on it, and every one of them is thus between outside walls and can be cross-ventilated. Every window is made with the lower panes on the hopper system; in effect the panes fall back into the room about 20 degrees, and the air is in constant movement from one side of the room to the other. In summer the upper panes can be opened in the ordinary way. It has been estimated that the air in the assembly room, 58 feet by 30 feet, which is the tongue of the “E” can be changed ten times in the hour and still be kept sufficiently warm. It has been felt by some that there was too much free air about this system, but a visit to Barr Hill appears to have suggested that children can be comfortable and much healthier in even more exposed situations.

The centre part of the frontage is the central part of the school. The boys’ and girls’ entrances lead directly into the inner ends if the verandah, cloak rooms, lavatory basins and assembly hall. Between the two entrances are the head master’s room and the kitchen, and on the entrance passages are the staff rooms. The staff will be nearly all specialists. The two halves of the frontage to right and left house four classrooms each, and the wings are divided into rooms designed for specialist subjects, such as chemistry, physics, handwork, hygiene, domestic science and art. Full equipment will be installed. At the extremities of the wings squares have been asphalted for wet weather games, but the space between the wings and the assembly hall will be left grassed. The whole of the exterior is of rustic-faced bricks with white and brown woodwork; the floors are maple, the walls distempered a fresh-complexioned cream. Everywhere the building is plain and free from irritating ornament, and possesses in its parts and as a whole a pleasant sense of order and simplicity. As a school it is an attractive place, and gives the impression that a satisfactory approach to the better instruction and health of children has been found. Mr Percy Howard of Manchester is the architect.

Enough land is left unoccupied to double the plan and thus complete the quadrangle whenever it is desired to provide the additional room. Such an extension will not be undertaken at the moment, but since the school is at the centre of two large Council housing schemes it is probable that its enlargement will in time become necessary. The present buildings are for about 160 boys and 160 girls in classes of about 36, and will cost £16,130, including the cost of the land. [Manchester Guardian 14 October 1925 page 13]

Reference    Builder July - December 1924 Page 71
Reference    Manchester Guardian 14 October 1925 page 13