The adage that 'school days are the best of our lives' is facile and depressing.
School is great for some kids while for others it's dreary, awkward, restrictive and even traumatic. For most of us, it's a bit of camp A and camp B.
Besides, why would you want your school days to be the best of your life? It's like resigning yourself to a false inevitability that everything goes downhill once you're an adult when it doesn't have to.
Read more: 11 things you could do in Leeds in the 1980s but can't do now
Now we've demolished that unhelpful cliché let's talk about schools which have themselves been demolished. Here are 11 Leeds schools – listed alphabetically – which are no longer with us.
Some were reduced to rubble while some are still standing although they have been repurposed. Some closed because their buildings were no longer fit for purpose. Others closed for more controversial reasons. You may have attended some of these schools whereas you'd have to be about 150 years old to have studied at the others.
There are clearly more than 11 schools that closed in Leeds in the millennia that the city has existed and we will soon be back with a second article featuring other lost schools. In the meantime, if you can think of any to include in Part II let us know in the comments below.
1. Aireborough Grammar
This state grammar school, opposite Nunroyd Park, opened as Yeadon and Guiseley Secondary School in 1910. The townships of Yeadon, Guiseley and Rawdon joined together in 1937 to become Aireborough Urban District and the school changed its name to reflect this.
The school continued as a state-funded grammar admitting only pupils who had passed the 11-plus exam at the end of their primary education. As its intake increased in the 1960s, the school building was extended before it became a comprehensive school in 1974.
The school closed in 1991 and was later demolished. Today it's a housing estate with streets named after two of Aireborough's houses, Coverley and Fairfax.
2. Benjamin Gott High School
This Armley school, named after an Armley industrialist, opened around 1961. The school, next to Gotts Park, made headlines in 1995 when it finished joint bottom in the national GCSE league tables.
In the previous two years, not a single pupil had gained five A* to C GCSE grades. By 1995, the school was running at less than half of its 750-pupil capacity and was facing a £1.3m bill for repairs following a fire that summer.
Leeds City Council decided the money would be better spent on more popular schools and Benjamin Gott High School closed in 1999. The site is now occupied by an outdoor activity centre.
3. Bewerley Street School
This Hunslet primary school opened in 1873. Initially an infant school, it had become a junior school by the 1950s when infant pupils moved to Hunslet Hall Road.
The redbrick building on the corner of Hunslet Hall Road and Disraeli Terrace is now a council social services centre.
4. Brudenell School
Originally called Brudenell Council School, this Victorian school on the corner of Welton Road and School View, Hyde Park, was demolished around 1990. A primary school, built in 1992, now stands on the site.
5. City of Leeds
City of Leeds School began as Leeds Central Higher Grade School in a school room attached to Oxford Place Chapel, in 1885. Four years later, the school moved to a purpose-built building at the junction of Woodhouse Lane and Great George Street.
The all-boys school, which specialised in science and technology, merged with the all-girls Thoresby High School next door to make the City of Leeds School in 1972.
The school vacated the building in 1994. Today it is offices for Leeds City Council.
6. Cockburn High
This high school on Burton Road was named after Sir George Cockburn, a former Chairman of Leeds School Board and an educationalist. The Beeston school opened in 1902 before it moved to its current site on Gipsy Lane, in the 1980s.
The site is now occupied by Hunslet Moor Primary School.
7. Leeds National School
Leeds National School opened in 1813 educating 500 poor children, aged 8 to 12, 320 of which were boys. We're not sure when the school closed or was demolished but it still exists on a map of the area from 1969. Today it is flats.
8. Matthew Murray
Matthew Murray High School, opened on Brown Lane East, Holbeck, in 1961. It closed in 2004 and was demolished.
The empty site will be home to Parklife, a community leisure campus with four artificial grass football pitches, a gym, cafe and GP practice.
9. Middleton County Secondary Modern
This postwar school opened on a plot of land bounded by Middleton Park Avenue, Acre Road, Sissons Terrace and Throstle Lane. The high school sat at the western end of the site while the primary school sat at the opposite, separated by playing fields which it is believed the schools shared.
The primary school still exists but the high school, later John Blenkinsop Middle School, closed around 1992. It was demolished and is now the Laurel Place housing estate.
10. South Leeds High
This school began as Belle Isle County Secondary School, around 1959. After several changes of name and organisation – it was later called Belle Isle Middle School, Merlyn Rees and South Leeds Arts College – it finally closed in September 2006.
11. West Leeds High
This school opened on Whingate, Armley, in 1907. The school educated boys and girls but they were kept apart. In 1959, the girls' school moved across the railway lines to Congress Mount.
The Whingate building was sold, renamed Old School Lofts and is now apartments.
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