TOP OF THE CLASS
School conversions are attractive to buyers — even when they’re former pupils, says Marcus Scriven
WE DON’T all have fond memories of school. But that does nothing to deter developers from turning former schools into characterful homes.
There is a market for such scholarly conversions, and not just among former pupils. Despina Constantinou refers to her school, Rossholme on the edge of the village of East Brent in Somerset, in affectionate terms.
‘Such a beautiful place,’ she says, adding that, from the lawn outside, you glimpse Brent Knoll — a hill from the top of which ‘you can probably see most of Somerset’.
Her description of arriving each day — past the 15th- century church, up the drive, through the front door to the hall with its balustraded staircase — is enough to make you want to move in.
Now, 11 years after closing, it’s for sale. Next month, the clock tower, with planning permission for conversion into a four-bedroom house, is up for auction with Greenslade Taylor Hunt, as are two plots, each with planning permission for four-bedroom houses, and the twobedroom gatehouse.
Thereafter, the nine-bedroom, fourbathroom Tudor house, clad in a Georgian facade, goes on the market separately, as do the coach house mews and the Victorian house (six bedrooms, four bathrooms and oak-floored hall) where former PM Gladstone once stayed.
The latter comes with a full- size billiards table, in a room specially built by Archdale Wickham, a clergyman who combined sport with scripture, remaining the wicket-keeper for Somerset well into his 50s. Five acres — with mature mulberry trees, holm oaks and an apple orchard, plus landscaped gardens — will be divided between the properties.
Despina and her husband have their eye on the clock tower.
Judy Webb, Rossholme’s owner and last headmistress, is familiar with the adoration which the school inspires: one of her former pupils recently returned and wept when told it was for sale.
She says that the new homeowners, whether old girls or not, will be spared ‘nimby’ resentment. ‘The two plots are within the village development boundary,’ she explains, adding that Rossholme is protected from encroachment by virtue of its previous incarnation as a vicarage. ‘It’s surrounded by glebe land, owned by the church.’
Old school buildings in cities lack similar green space, but planning rules ensure that their conversion preserves the features that distinguish them from contemporary designs.
LONDON agent Kinleigh Folkard & Hayward cites two former schools in Islington whose flats combine contemporary interiors with high ceilings and original windows, which flood the properties with light.
Foxton’s Islington sales manager, Alex Leigh, says that the architectural quirks and varied layouts of such buildings are part of their appeal. A decade or so ago the building of new academy status secondary schools saw many old state schools come onto the market.
Today, with pupil numbers falling by 5 per cent since 2008, it is small boarding schools outside the southeast that are up for sale.
Among closures is Chilton Cantelo School, 30 miles from Rossholme.
Unlike the latter, Chilton Cantelo is Grade II-listed, which means that future conversion of the main house — a lavish, Jacobeanstyle creation, with Dutch gables and Doric columns — will require scrupulous conversion.
In North Yorkshire, brothers Jamie and Jonathan Seddon are contending with the planning system, having bought their old prep school, Malsis, also Grade II-listed, which has an array of buildings, including a gatehouse and chapel.
Explaining their decision to buy, Jamie said that he and Jonathan had ‘a deep affection for the school’ and wanted to ‘ save a building where we’d had some of our happiest times’.
Plans involve converting the school into a rehabilitation centre for wounded servicemen, and building 100 new houses on Malsis’s 32 acres.
La Sagesse, a former Roman Catholic school in the Newcastle suburb of Jesmond, which closed in 2009, is now home to 48 houses and flats by David Wilson Homes.
But Jeff Winn, new owner of Jesmond Towers — the school’s central Grade IIlisted, Gothic building — has decided against converting it into ten apartments, preferring instead to restore it as a private house.
His partner, Danielle Dunn, envisages it as ‘a bit like Downton Abbey’.
What would the headmaster say?