Pleasant memories of former school

When you’re at the beginning of your educational life you never imagine that, years later, your primary or infant school would end up abandoned and derelict. But back in 2012, one school in Kennington which educated scores of locals ended up being just that.

The former infant school built in 1963 as Ashford

Kennington South Junior Mixed and Infants (JMI) School, and latterly Bybrook Infants School, had become surplus to requirements by 2008 when a new school was built on the former junior school site in Belmont Road.

A lovely little school where many of us (including myself) were educated had been abandoned in dramatic fashion and ended up laying empty in a prolonged dereliction due to the developer ceasing trade.

By dramatic fashion, the former school became an urban explorers’ paradise, but also a haven for vandalism and destruction by those who get a kick out of destroying buildings – and give the urbex clan a bad name.

In fact, many urban explorers leave things be and do not rip the chosen building apart.

Normally, many of the sites they visit have already been visited first.

One has to say that the lack of security and hoarding gave a unique opportunity to those who knew the old school well a chance to say goodbye to an old friend and, indeed, a big part of their lives.

Today, the former school site off Bybrook Road is home to luxury houses sitting in a gated complex, however one thinks about what was there before every time one passes by.

The development is today known as Old School Mews – an apt name for the former educational institute.

This week, Remember When looks back to 2012 and prior to the bulldozers moving in.

By 2014 the school was gone, and the new houses were built on the site.

A perfectly good building that the county council dispensed with – sadly an all too common practice.

Do you have any photographs or slides of old Ashford you would be willing to loan me to enable them to be scanned for a possible feature in the Kentish Express?

Please don’t delay, get in touch!

Please email me: rememberwhen_kmash@ hotmail.co.uk

Write to me: Steve Salter, Kentish Express Remember When, Unit 4, Park Mall Shopping Centre, Ashford, Kent, TN24 8RY.

2012 - Many Kent schools up and down the county still have these terrapin-styled prefabricated classroom blocks in use today

2012 - The derelict entrance to the former infant school in Bybrook Road, Kennington

2012 - The former playground at the abandoned Bybrook Infants School

The former Barclays Bank in the High Street, Ashford