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Report - - Greenmill Primary School (Cumnock Academy), Cumnock - June 2024 | Other Sites | 28DaysLater.co.uk

Report - Greenmill Primary School (Cumnock Academy), Cumnock - June 2024

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tree_of_oak

28DL Member
28DL Member
THE HISTORY
Greenmill Primary School was the main primary school of the small town of Cumnock in the deep dark depths of East Ayrshire. It also happened to be my former primary school so this was a very exciting explore for me and allowed me to share the spoken history of the building which often enough doesn't get covered by the books.
The current building was built in 2 phases on the site of Hillside House (1846), nothing remains of the old house bar the extensive playground which was where the gardens were and (possibly?) the walls facing onto the Strand which look a lot older than the school does. By the 20th century, a boom in Cumnock's population had resulted in overcrowding at the main Parish School, to rectify this Hillside House, directly across Barrhill Road from the Parish School, was bought in 1908 and renovated by the local school board then opened as 'Cumnock Higher Grade School' in 1911.

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The former Hillside House of 1846

By the 1920s overcrowding had again became an issue so an annex was built in 1924 then opened in 1926. This annex is the oldest current part of the building and included a small gymnasium and a tiny swimming pool.
Then in 1927 the school board saw it fit to rename the school to 'Cumnock Academy' with a school rol of ~900 pupils.

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The school after the first phase was built but still with the original Hillside House

The second phase was opened in 1939, forming a U-Plan across the former Hillside House and thus marked the final extension of the school it is not noticeably more modern than the first phase despite being built over a decade after it.

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The school with both phases built

The last major change to the school was in 1969 when the original Cumnock Academy swapped buildings with the original Greenmill Primary School to it's (now demolished) site on Ayr Road. Thus the building became it's final incarnation as Greenmill Primary School for a further 50 years until 2022 when the building closed as a school with the opening of Lochnorris Primary School on Auchinleck Road.

Now for the meat and potatoes...

PHASE 1 (Opened 1926)
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Starting at the main entrance (not how I got in) we see a pretty dire scene, unfortunately the local neds got in before me so there is a lot of vandalism across the school. Fortunately not enough that it's not a complete historical write off but enough that it detracts a bit from the immersion. Also absolutely no power so don't expect the best lighting in photos. The school only has boarded up windows on the bottom floor so it ends up balancing out anyways.
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The classrooms on this floor all look generally like this with nice glazed windows looking into the main corridor. From my memory these classrooms were disused even when I was there in the late 00s/early 10s. Only used once to watch a massive old TV around 2010.

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This dilapidated room was the nursery which I myself only have vague memories of, the classroom is much bigger than all the others in the first phase so I can only assume this was some kind of 'techy' workshop originally. Note also the 70s esque fibreglass ceiling, a lot of the older rooms had these and I can only assume it was because the hanging fluorescent lights which are common in the halls and other classrooms had a tendency to fall off. This happened on more than one ocasion that I personally remember.

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The gymnasium (gym hall as we knew it) was in surprisingly decent knick, the changing and storage rooms too. I wasn't going to chance it on the monkey bars one last time but it was a really good to see it not completely slaughtered by vandals. The changing rooms I don't have as good of a memory of, they were always a sort of out of bounds area as a kid because no one ever used them to change (we would just do it in the classroom). The different looking door at the far end of the last photo is the entrance to the aforementioned swimming pool which will be covered next.

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Here is the pretty pathetic swimming pool. I'm not old enough to know how this was even used for learning as it is simply so small, I'm going to assume this was closed in 1969 when the schools swapped but this is not grounded in any evidence. There was also a disturbing rumour that someone drowned in here in the 1930s and that's why it was closed however I again have no evidence for this in any newspaper articles from the time. Given that these were primary aged kids making these rumours I'd hazard a guess that this is just made up.
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The first phase stairs are one of my most favourite places in the building, the cast iron railings are lovely and the checkered tiles add more to its aesthetics. The condition and lighting gets a lot better up here with no boarded windows and plenty of lovely original Interwar detailing. The little nook is directly behind the first photo and served as a small cloakroom for the classes on this floor.
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This toilet was a surprise to find and was something I genuinely did not know existed, this room shows what the school generally would have looked like as built. The mirror is a simple yet lovely find too.
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This is what the top first floor classrooms look like, there are 3 (iirc) all empty with their own cupboard. The chipping paint is also interesting, I think this was the original paint used in the years as Cumnock Academy as lots of old doors have a pastel blue paint under the coats of cream/green.
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Also on this floor of phase 1 is the aptly named 'blue room'. This was used as a conference/meeting room and had a nice carpet and, now sadly gone, comfy seats around a huge table, it is one of two big rooms in phase 1 up here that weren't proper classrooms.
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And with that we jump a decade forward up the stairs to 1939 in the phase 2 extension...

PHASE 2 (Opened 1939)
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This section is noticeably darker as the corridors are now in the middle of the rooms and there are a lot more boarded up windows. The panneling has also changed to thicker boards and there is now some nice coving on the ceiling.
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The building also changes to 3 stories at this point with a lower floor holding the canteen, kitchen and boiler room. The stairs have very nice brass handrails yet I still find the cast iron railings more appealing.
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The main toilets were up on this floor I suspect as this is probably the most central location to the building. The toilets are (surprisingly?) the most modern part of the building having been modernised at some point before the late 00s to this condition. It's very easy to tell which one is which with the almost cartoonish panelling and it certainly adds a more childlike aura to the building which before I feel like had a very traditional aesthetic to it.
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The classrooms along the straight edge here take this appearance with large windows along the edge facing towards the town and small skylight window on the edge facing out above the corridor. These are also smaller classrooms having no attached cupboard and being more of a square shape than rectangular.


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This was the library when I went to Greenmill. The graffiti-esque mural always felt quite out of place, even with a lack of bookshelves. I'm unsure if this was the original library for the school.
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Despite looking quite unasuming, I was very dissapointed with this dead end, there used to be a massive timber structure in the middle which formed the largest cloakroom in the building.
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Here we see the largest classrooms in the phase 2 extension, they are also the largest classrooms in the school. These were known quite simply as the 'big classes' due to their size and that they were always used for the primary 6/7 classes and thus had the 'big people' in them. I don't know if there is a reason why these classes are so much bigger than the other classes but if I was to guess, it would be due to the large assembly hall underneath.
 

Calamity Jane

i see beauty in the unloved, places & things
Regular User
Decent 1st report. Very personal to you too. I do love the personal connection reports, you get an insiders opinion 👍
 

tree_of_oak

28DL Member
28DL Member
PART 2
PHASE 2 CONTINUED (Ground Floor and Basement)

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Here is the affectionately known 'Cauld Stairs' right beside the big classes known as such because they were freezing even in the height of summer, this also lead to stories of the 'Greenmill Ghost'. Of course there was no paranormal activity and can again like the drowning be attributed to schoolchildren being schoolchildren. Didn't help the janies (janitors) played into the story too! The stairs led down to a landing where you could go down into the playground or into the assembly hall.
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The assembly hall still thankfully had it's lovely curtains and is a place of many memories for me, there was many a halloween disco or christmas party had here. The christmas fair was also held in split between here and the gym hall which was another lovely event of days gone by.
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This was the janies office, was never in here so I don't have anything to say except that I love the large window above the partition. I can only imagine that this was probably the original headmasters office with the more opulent design however I could be wrong.
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This was the playroom when I went to Greenmill and it mirrors the of the big classroom above it, historically this was probably just an ordinary classroom but in my time it was where you went to have golden time. Many happy memories here.
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Here is the staffroom, again not much to say here as I was not in this room very much. The last image shows the corridor we just walked down with all the rooms I've shown being on the right and the remaining door being a small staff toilet.
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This nice little entrance was the main entrance to the school. The original outside doors were unfortunately taken out before closure.
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This was the school office, I particularly love the original blackboard in here. Rumour had it that in all classes there was still a blackboard under the whiteboards/prometheans but I (nor the neds that came before me) never checked.

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Moving to the basement level we have 2 choices, the left door is for pupils going to the canteen and the right door is for kitchen staff going to the kitchen. Off camera to the left there is another door taking you to the boiler room.
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The boiler room is by far the creepiest in the building, it was always off limits but had shuttered vents you could look in to see the industrial machinery down below (probably where my love for urbex started lol). The boiler was a late change from coal to gas as plenty of people still have memories of coal bags being lowered by crane to the boiler room below.
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The canteen is definitely where mould has hit harder than vandals. Didn't spend too long here without a mask. The protruding supports and pipes always gave this room a very industrial feel. Does anyone else get this imposing feeling from interwar buildings? I certainly get it from things like the old Glasgow telephone exchanges that are still about or the interwar tenements you find dotted about too. They seem to mix the coming 50s/60s utilitarianism with the victorian elegance of previous eras.
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The image is a tad blurry but this is the staff corridor leading to the kitchen and former staff entrance, I remember looking down through from the playground where you could see some of their blue and white uniforms hanging up.
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The kitchen as with the canteen was damp and covered in mould, all the equipment is still there and fortunately I saw no rotten food, however with all the mould I would not be surprised if there was some somewhere.
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Here's the original staff door which displays the original pastel blue and ochre paint scheme. These would be the same doors which would be present on the main entrance mentioned previously.
 

tree_of_oak

28DL Member
28DL Member
PART 3
UNDERGROUND?

As I went to leave I had an urge to investigate something from long ago in my past. I remember being in primary 6/7 and being brought to help the janie to take something to the bins. As such we were brought to the original basement of the school, underneath the gym hall. There was old changing rooms/showers there which hadn't been used since the school shut as an academy in the 60s (I can't remember where but there is archive footage of this bit interestingly!) and a further sort of loading dock where the janie kept his scooter (a classic vespa iirc) and the bins. But there were also various holes in the wall far above human head height which lead into pitch black darkness. The outside entrance was welded shut so no luck there but on a final search back through to make sure I hadn't missed anything I came across something unusual. First of all though I meant to show the lovely and bright original main entrance which by my time was only used for nursery children going in and out.
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Moving further on I also meant to show the glazed windows looking into classrooms from the corridors I mentioned in the first section.
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It's a shame they're smashed but I always loved these even as a small child.
Moving back to the lovely stairwell you may notice something peculiar.
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I had meant to explore those nooks under the stairs earlier!
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Going inside it appeared to just be a toilet and it may have remained so had I not decided to enter fully and look at the back wall.
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There it was in al of it's damp, dark and probably quite dangerous glory. I had found the entrance I was looking for.
What was down there?
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Toilets...
This subfloor was probably the single most claustrophobic spaces I've been in and I (possibly quite stupidly) decided to press on and try and make my way to the old changing rooms.
Things I was not expecting to find down there included: 2 boxes from the 1940s which I took a blurry picture of, a traffic cone, a random hole that let me stop crawling for a bit, more toilets, a can of tennents, a bottle of buckfast, plenty of wires and a box of chalk.
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This eventually lead to a very old looking wooden door which lead to a second boiler room. I would have explored this however the drop was high enough that it would've been hard to pull myself back up. For reference that larger black door is a good 1.5x the size of a regular door.

Thus concludes the explore, I hope you have enjoyed my rambles on the building and I wish you a good day/night wherever you are!
 

MacMan

28DL Full Member
28DL Full Member
Excellent report and really liked the personal connection for yourself which adds to the history. Also managed an explore myself in here and liked seeing the old features that were still around despite some modernisation.
 
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