Amid the glorious Victorian houses of Birkdale village stood Terra Nova, a private boarding school for boys set up in 1904. During the war in 1939 the school was transferred to Cheshire where it remains to this day and the Birkdale site was taken over by the CNRO as a records office until 1948. The school for the deaf was originally founded in Liverpool and registered in 1825 as the Liverpool School for the Deaf. When the school transferred to the Birkdale site in 1948 it changed its name to the Liverpool School for the Partially Deaf and was officially opened on the 11th September 1948 by the Earl of Derby.
The school was nationally renowned for its excellence and for its borders it was home. Amongst the more profoundly deaf it was a sanctuary from a cruel world they did not understand. The inability to hear or speak made it difficult for them as teenagers to form relationships with people outside the school and so many of the pupils went on to marry classmates in later life, had it not been for Birkdale they may never have met. The importance it had in these children’s lives had not gone unnoticed, and in 1989 Princess Diana visited the school. There was once a plaque to commemorate the occasion but due to severe looting and neglect the site has very few valuables left inside. To follow its already extensive and confusing list of name changes, the school changed name another two times, in 1964 it became the School for the Partially Hearing Birkdale and then in 1986 it became the Birkdale School for Hearing Impaired Children. It kept this name until its closure on 23rd July 2003, when more modern facilities across the region took precedence over the dated school. Since then, there has been no control taken over the future of the site and it was been left open to severe neglect, resulting in one end of the main building being partially demolished after an arson attack in 2010. The most recent redevelopment project was rejected by the local council in 2011, and further plans to turn the site into modern flats appear to be on hold despite sitting in one of the wealthiest areas of Merseyside.
Doreen Woodford, author, historian and advocate for the rights of deaf people in the U.K was one of few people to ever document her account of the experiences she had as a child at Birkdale. Four years after the closure of the school, and five years before her death in 2012, she wrote “The Education of the Deaf in Liverpool and on Merseyside.” Describing her life moving from mainstream secondary school in 1969;
“Up to the age of 12yrs I attended mainstream schools where my deafness created many problems, I found the teachers had no understanding of my impairment whatsoever, I was sat at the back of a low achievers class of between 30/40 rowdy kids…mostly off in a world of my own. I could only get into Birkdale when I turned 12yrs old due to the waiting list. Arriving at Birkdale in 1969, I can just about remember standing (holding back the tears) outside the main door waving to my mum as she left in the taxi to take her back to the train station in Southport. The first few days were a scary experience as I got used to the routine of a day at the school, very strict and timed events such as getting up and getting ready for breakfast (making my own bed!). But as time went on this routine had a good effect on the way I saw myself, I was no longer the loner and made friends easier because everyone was in the same boat, and because of the routine, I knew from one day to the next what to expect. I relaxed and began to settle in pretty fast. Compared to mainstream school, time spent in the classroom at Birkdale was like opening a window in my head and letting the breeze (education) get to my brain, small class sizes (max 12/15 children), headphones where the teacher’s voice came directly through to you, constant one-on-one tuition and hardly any restriction on the teacher’s time. Free time was also much more enjoyable as we could run amok on the school fields, play football, tennis, cricket, do some gardening in the allotment or look after the birds in the aviary. On wet days we would play table tennis, swim in the pool or just chill, watch T.V or read a book. In the later years (14yrs onwards) also out sailing on Marine Lake a couple of times a week. I think I had an advantage to other children at Birkdale because they had been at the school from their first day and had no experience of being in a mainstream environment, I knew how tough life outside Birkdale had been, so I knew that the school was a good place to be.”
