Report - Kenilworth Secondary School (Castle Sixth Form Site), Warwickshire - March 2025

[MotionlessMike]

Kenilworth Secondary School (Castle Sixth Form Site), Warwickshire - March 2025

This school was originally built in 1961 and began life as Castle End High School. With the increase in the local population came the need to restructure the towns’ educational sites - this led to the school being renamed as simply ‘Kenilworth School’ in 1990 which was split over 2 sites.

More recently the two Kenilworth sites have been replaced with a new school along Glasshouse Lane which lead to them being permanently closed in September 2023. This site is owned by the local council and is due to be redeveloped for housing.

Gymnasium

There wasn't a 'hall' as such, just a large canteen type space with a small theatre plonked in the middle of it.

Design Technology... All very stripped

Art class featuring someone's lost pink masterpiece

Some stairs. Even though there was three floors of classrooms, I didn't take any upstairs due to how empty and featureless they were.

There were four or five science classrooms downstairs

This one had been attacked by scrappers at some point

The schools’ much larger and more impressive sister-site along Leyes Lane is also vacant and awaiting redevelopment. This school had a notable security presence outside it in the form of a dog unit, but looking at the state of the heras fence, locals are clearly trying to find their way in...

 

[Sewage_waste]

Very nice mate, happy to see it’s not completely trashed yet.

 

[mookster]

Very very reminiscent of the old Leamington School built around the same time, presumably by the same people!

Didn't realise this was there, despite being fairly local.

 

[MotionlessMike]

Didn't realise this was there, despite being fairly local.

Might be worth trying to mooch the bigger site sometime?

 

[mookster]

Might be worth trying to mooch the bigger site sometime?

Got to be worth a punt.

It's strange as like the St. John Fisher school sites down in Chatham, the much older nicer part had all the security in the world attached to it whilst the more modern 1960s site had nothing except one shouty camera.

 

[dead format]

I live very close to this site - and coincidentally was in the Leyes Lane site through work last year - we were there to recover some equipment. I had a mooch around whilst there. Kids had already started breaking in to the terrapins but they have kept the security pretty tight on it.

I think I have some of the original plans from it in my stash - I've certainly got some from a few of the other local schools. All drawn up by the then county architect - name escapes me but I'll have a look later. He was quite a prolific figure.

Leyes Lane is pretty bare and largely modernized - but still has some interesting relics of the past. The new school were still removing bits from there last summer.

My special subject is the M&E of Warwickshire schools (again through my work) - so I have all sorts of mundane information about this site

The bakery opposite is an excellent lunch stop top

 

[Exploring With Oliver]

It amazes me how so many perfectly good school buildings are getting abandoned recently and replaced by brand new buildings.

 

[dead format]

It amazes me how so many perfectly good school buildings are getting abandoned recently and replaced by brand new buildings.

It's a combination of things. And they're usually far from perfectly good behind the scenes. These 60's builds are of an age now - and weren't exactly built like the Victorian schools. They're a bit restrictive to the sizes needed for modern schools - think new houses and additional needs etc.

Lack of preventative maintenance / lifecycle works was something that put the nail in the coffin of these places too. Since academies became a thing, Local Authorities no longer managed these works in state schools - IE all the behind the scenes stuff that kept the places running. Responsibility basically went to the headteacher - and headteachers won't be thinking about window replacement schemes; rewires; boiler upgrades etc - so a lot of these 60s state schools are really ailing. It becomes better value to just build new schools when they finally get to the end of their serviceable life - then sell the land.

Leyes Lane for example was running mid 90's Hamworthy boilers and ran on an old BMS system called JEL2000. All difficult to manage and silly inefficient. A few of the other schools still have things like rubber cable feeding old rewireable fuse boards and stuff. Plus all the asbestos.

The Kenilworth sites were lucky in a way. Most schools just leave all the fixtures, fittings and funriture behind - simply because the new building comes with new stuff. After Leyes Lane had been left empty for a year or so I caught wind of it and was able to arrange to recover about 1200 serviceable items and redeploy them at other schools. It was a bit of a satisfying achievement tbf

 

[UrbandonedTeam]

dusty is gonna be fuming when he sees this

 

[HughieD]

Very decent place that and great set of pics.

 

[MotionlessMike]

dusty is gonna be fuming when he sees this

Did I accidentally mooch upon his territory? Or is this where bro got educated?

Only two things I can think of.

 

[UrbandonedTeam]

Did I accidentally mooch upon his territory? Or is this where bro got educated?

Only two things I can think of.

We spent an hour or so here shortly after it had closed, which is prime dusty territory. All the macs were still in the classrooms etc. I was not interested and ever since, 'Kenny' had become a curse word with how many times he'd tried to nag us to go back

 

[DustySensorPhotography]

Did I accidentally mooch upon his territory? Or is this where bro got educated?

Only two things I can think of.

Kenny has a place in my heart.. failed the sixth form when she was fresh but got the main school at the tail end of an extremely drunken night in leam <3

 

[MotionlessMike]

Kenny has a place in my heart.. failed the sixth form when she was fresh but got the main school at the tail end of an extremely drunken night in leam <3

Ah good man, was hoping someone had made it in. Next time the others ignore your nagging you give Mike a call 🤣