| The St.Helens
Road site of the old Prescot Grammar
School and latterly Prescot School was
the subject of a pre-meditated arson
attack in early 1978. The attack took
place in the early hours of the morning
and the perpetrator, an ex-pupil Derek
Melia was subsequently imprisoned for his
deed. There were in fact two fires to see
off most of the 'temporary' buildings
erected in 1924. The first fire
destroyed all the classrooms from between
the library and approximately Room 12,
including science and language labs. The
block containing the sixth form centre
and the old outside toilets survived, as
did the 1960's development around the
Spencer Briggs Hall. It seems that in the
second fire in July 1978 destroyed the
gymnasium area, the central quad and the
Staff Room. In the first fire all the
fantastic school pictures outside the
library were lost forever. [See
Glyn Phillips' photos of the site in the
early nineties].
Temporary
'portakabins' were erected prior to the
full move to the Knowsley Park Lane site
soon after. Apparently, even the staff
had to make do with life in one of these
'huts'. Even when the two sites were
amalgamated on Knowsley Park lane's site,
there was very little new building except
for the VIth Form Centre built on the
field at Park Wing and the inevitable
portakabins on the tennis courts.
There is
a belief that the arson attack was a
stroke of good fortune for the Local
Education Authority as it was a time of
falling roles and conservative government
encouragement to sell off school fields
to property developers for housing needs!
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