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Oaklands Convent - Leyland - March 2019 | Other Sites | 28DaysLater.co.uk

Oaklands Convent - Leyland - March 2019

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Alboppo

28DL Full Member
28DL Full Member
This is my first post (3rd explore), so please go easy on me!
I had seen this building on my way to work a couple of times and was quite intrigued, so we decided to go and explore this afternoon.
In its day the convent building and site must’ve been lovely, after the last of the nuns left in 2016, the building was sold on and I’ve found details of a couple of planning applications to turn it in to a nursing home. Work has started on the interior (although this looks to have stopped) and the exterior is boarded - it was a doddle to get in without causing any damage though ;)

Most of the interior has been stripped out and sadly, the original fireplaces are no more which is the same for the staircase, but there are some of the original features left around the top of the walls and the ceilings.
Rather helpfully, someone had left a ladder behind which allowed us to get upstairs and have a scout around. There’s quite a lot of broken glass around as Most of the stained glass windows have been smashed prior to boarding.
We came back down to the ground floor and went to look in the basement, access to this was easy, but unfortunately, it is flooded with around 1 ft of water down there and bits of furniture, fire extinguishers and other odds and sods floating about.
There does look to have been a small fire upstairs at some point and there is some smoke damage on the walls/ ceilings.
There are several mattresses around the place and it looks like people have stayed here in the past, but, we saw no sign of anyone.

There is very little in the way of information on this building online so here’s what I could find...
When the Poor Clares, an order of nuns, came to Leyland during the Second World War they opened a convent in Moss Lane. The house thought to have been built around 1824, was owned over the years by many of the influential families of Lancashire.
When the Poor Clares moved to Arundel, they were followed by The Sisters of Our Lady of the Mission who moved into the premises.
The Sisters of Our Lady were a teaching order who opened a school next door at Oaklands, which was previously the home of Mrs Janey Baxter, the widow of James Edgar Baxter, the previous chairman of the directors of the Leyland & Birmingham Rubber Company, before he set up his own company J E Baxter & Co on Tuer Street.
In 2016, the last two remaining Sisters moved out.

Here’s a few pics to look at. Thanks for reading and I hope this post is ok :D

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Yorrick

A fellow of infinite jest
28DL Full Member
Good effort and decent first post, don't think I've seen this before. Looks like the refurb is/was going to cover those lovely plaster details. Shame.

Can you put a month and year of your visit in the title please. It helps with any comparisons to future reports, explorers etc
 

Alboppo

28DL Full Member
28DL Full Member
Yorrick, it really is a huge shame if they end up covering it all up.
Thanks for the tips on the title :D I've updated it now
 

Milhouse

28DL Full Member
28DL Full Member
I drive past this daily and have always wanted to look inside but due to seeing how boarded up it was I never bothered, so glad to see pics on here
 

Defonsecca

28DL Member
28DL Member
Wow. I feel I have to post - this is my old infant / junior school back in the 70's! And it brought back some not very happy memories of being taught by the resident nuns..... The main school was right next to it but they used Oaklands as a school as well when I was there with the nuns living in a newer convent in the same grounds.

And what a forbidding place it was. Looking at it now, it is (or could be) a beautiful old mansion, but as a school kid it was a scary, creaky old place with a heavy & depressing atmosphere. I still get a sudden chill down my spine whenever I go past it on the M6. For a start it was haunted by a ghost child who died in the cellar many years ago. It was always a dare for us to venture down the stairs leading to the cellar door, no-one ever got past half-way down! It also had a couple of "secret" corridors linking rooms. Oaklands definitely left an impression on me, I even got a bit freaked-out just looking at that first photo above. However I certainly have no desire to go back inside...... Alboppo - you're a brave man!

The whole atmosphere wasn't helped by the strict Catholic nuns who ruled with an iron fist (literally....). They were part of the whole fabric & soul of the place. Looking back, it was clear a couple of them (but not all) definitely got kicks out of giving physical pain. Caning or a metal ruler on the knuckles or cygnet ring thumped in the back of the neck were all common occurrences. I'm sure there were kids with dyslexia, Asperger's etc etc but such things just weren't in their dictionary. One nun had six canes all of various woods & shapes. I got a caning for breaking a window completely by accident, outside the Headmistresses office ( a nun...) in-front of lots of other pupils just to add to the humiliation (a common suffering). Still, I guess such OTT discipline ensured our classes were always impeccably behaved.

Anyway, all that happy stuff aside (!), it is indeed sad to see such an iconic, imposing & wonderful looking building go to ruin. Good photos though, well-done!!
 

Jox88

28DL Full Member
28DL Full Member
I've been here today. We found about 8 kids inside trying to kick the boards off the windows. It looks nothing like this now. I was gutted. No stairs, the walls are studding and brick. No stairs, basement entrance is full to the brim with all sorts of crap. And the yellow/greeny chair is just a frame. I seen it on the side of the road on the way to my friends. Researched it and found this post. When I stepped inside I was honestly gutted. Couldn't even get upstairs to see it. I know on you're photos there isnt much of any of the above but I couldn't believe how bad it was in comparison lol.
 
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Flexwingflyer

28DL Member
28DL Member
My parents garden backed onto the school playground ( a high chain link fence all around it )and from my bedroom window I could see most of the school. All the school children wore a green uniform ( green flies as they were known as locally ). It was quite comical watching the nuns playing tennis on a hot summers day in all their regalia they didn’t like us local kids playing football in the playground after school and at weekends. I don’t know what’s happened to the graveyard on the west side of where the nuns lived, I do remember seeing a few graves there ( that’s back in the sixties ). But as for the big house in the previous threads it’s all been flattened, not sure what’s going to be in its place.
 

westernsultan

Banned
Banned
My parents garden backed onto the school playground ( a high chain link fence all around it )and from my bedroom window I could see most of the school. All the school children wore a green uniform ( green flies as they were known as locally ). It was quite comical watching the nuns playing tennis on a hot summers day in all their regalia they didn’t like us local kids playing football in the playground after school and at weekends. I don’t know what’s happened to the graveyard on the west side of where the nuns lived, I do remember seeing a few graves there ( that’s back in the sixties ). But as for the big house in the previous threads it’s all been flattened, not sure what’s going to be in its place.
scroll up and you'll see my link to the planning approval
 

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