CHARLES EDWARD BROOKE SCHOOL
THE HISTORY:
Opened in 1899, this grand Victorian school was built in the red-brick Renaissance style which has become ubiquitous among well-respected, high-performing educational facilities. Beginning life as a training college for female teachers in 1900, it was acquisitioned by the War Office in WW1 to be used as a hospital for the Royal Army Medical Corps to treat soldiers injured in the war before it could return to its educational routes and become a school. By 2012 the school was closed and the chapel as part of it was converted into a residential property but the main school has sat vacant ever since.
Just as I’m writing this now I have discovered that this place was in fact done back in 2018 by @SpiderMonkey and the confusion appears to arise from the fact that this place has at least four different names! While it was opened as St Gabriel’s Church Training College, it became London General Hospital during the war before becoming Kennington Girls School and then later changing again to Charles Edward Brook School. To add further to the confusion, the Victorian Society and Historic England believe this place to be called Kennington Boys School, so it’s basically anyone’s guess as to its real name, but it’s certainly got a rich history!
THE EXPLORE:
In the middle of a six day road trip in the south of England we found ourselves once again feeling villainous in the Big Smoke and there was only one thing that would satisfy our seemingly insatiable thirst for bandos: Kennington Boys. Having just come from the most bizarre interaction with a live-in Guardian any of us had ever experienced (as is detailed in the @jtza report) we were more aware than we might once have been of the guardian signs outside this one, but we proceeded nevertheless and were soon on site – of course not without triggering a few sensors on the way; a mistake which would end up nearly costing us some precious time inside!
Given that none of us had seen the @SpiderMonkey report beforehand, we were all pleasantly surprised by the state the school was in twelve years after closure, with only a handful of damage really having been done to the site. This is likely due to the full metal sheet boarding they’ve done to the lower floors of this place, essentially making it inaccessible to all the local riff-raff.
After having been inside for a pretty decent while, Alex and I had decided to make an emergency visit to the upstairs toilets and left @UrbandonedTeam and Theo downstairs shooting downstairs, as we believed we had the place to ourselves. How foolish! Rudely interrupting my business, I received a hushed call from @UrbandonedTeam that there was a man patrolling inside and they had chosen the very comfortable hiding position of inside a cupboard in order to evade capture. Fearing the worst, Alex and I finished our business and stood on lookout at the top of both stairwells, but it appears the guard's thorough search ended on the second floor and we all watched him leave and get back in his van from the safety of the upper floors.
Thanks for reading!
THE HISTORY:
Opened in 1899, this grand Victorian school was built in the red-brick Renaissance style which has become ubiquitous among well-respected, high-performing educational facilities. Beginning life as a training college for female teachers in 1900, it was acquisitioned by the War Office in WW1 to be used as a hospital for the Royal Army Medical Corps to treat soldiers injured in the war before it could return to its educational routes and become a school. By 2012 the school was closed and the chapel as part of it was converted into a residential property but the main school has sat vacant ever since.
Just as I’m writing this now I have discovered that this place was in fact done back in 2018 by @SpiderMonkey and the confusion appears to arise from the fact that this place has at least four different names! While it was opened as St Gabriel’s Church Training College, it became London General Hospital during the war before becoming Kennington Girls School and then later changing again to Charles Edward Brook School. To add further to the confusion, the Victorian Society and Historic England believe this place to be called Kennington Boys School, so it’s basically anyone’s guess as to its real name, but it’s certainly got a rich history!
THE EXPLORE:
In the middle of a six day road trip in the south of England we found ourselves once again feeling villainous in the Big Smoke and there was only one thing that would satisfy our seemingly insatiable thirst for bandos: Kennington Boys. Having just come from the most bizarre interaction with a live-in Guardian any of us had ever experienced (as is detailed in the @jtza report) we were more aware than we might once have been of the guardian signs outside this one, but we proceeded nevertheless and were soon on site – of course not without triggering a few sensors on the way; a mistake which would end up nearly costing us some precious time inside!
Given that none of us had seen the @SpiderMonkey report beforehand, we were all pleasantly surprised by the state the school was in twelve years after closure, with only a handful of damage really having been done to the site. This is likely due to the full metal sheet boarding they’ve done to the lower floors of this place, essentially making it inaccessible to all the local riff-raff.
After having been inside for a pretty decent while, Alex and I had decided to make an emergency visit to the upstairs toilets and left @UrbandonedTeam and Theo downstairs shooting downstairs, as we believed we had the place to ourselves. How foolish! Rudely interrupting my business, I received a hushed call from @UrbandonedTeam that there was a man patrolling inside and they had chosen the very comfortable hiding position of inside a cupboard in order to evade capture. Fearing the worst, Alex and I finished our business and stood on lookout at the top of both stairwells, but it appears the guard's thorough search ended on the second floor and we all watched him leave and get back in his van from the safety of the upper floors.
Thanks for reading!
