Our campaign is now complete. 64 supporters helped us raise £2,873.00
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UPDATE STATEMENT - 29 JUNE 2023
Thank you to everyone who has generously donated to our campaign to save the Victorian village school in Garway, Herefordshire.
Your support enabled us to fight this case all the way to the Court of Appeal.
We have just received disappointing news that the Court of Appeal has found against our legal objections to the planned demolition of the historic school building. This handsome Victorian building – which already has planning permission for conversion into flats – is now set to be needlessly demolished.
To see our full statement on the decision and background detail on the campaign, please follow the link below, and thank you once again for your support.
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The campaign to save a charming Victorian school building in rural Herefordshire is set to culminate at a Court of Appeal Hearing in spring 2023.
SAVE Britain's Heritage, which has led the legal battle to save the school alongside a lively community campaign since 2020, will be making the case that demolition was approved without correct process.
If our appeal is successful, we hope to set a legal precedent that could help save thousands of other unprotected historic buildings across the country.
With the Hearing set to be confirmed for the spring, we now need to raise funds to cover our legal costs.
Fighting appeals is an expensive business so we are now looking to raise £10,000 towards these costs and we need your help to halt these destructive plans!
We are very grateful for a donation of £500 made by the Garway Heritage Group to support SAVE's work to save the old Garway School from demolition. This amount appears in the total shown.
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The legal battle follows a sustained campaign against the decision by Herefordshire Council in April 2022 to allow demolition of the 1877 school building in the village of Garway under a planning loophole called Permitted Development Rights (PDR).
SAVE launched Judicial Review proceedings in response to the decision, culminating in a one-day hearing at the Royal Courts of Justice on London's Strand on 9th November 2022. At the hearing, we argued that the council had failed to properly assess whether the school was unsafe or uninhabitable, a key test when deciding whether to permit applications under PDR.
In order for the demolition of a building to be allowed under PDR - a planning mechanism which bypasses the need for full planning permission - a building must not have been rendered unsafe or uninhabitable as a result of the owner's own neglect (action or inaction). SAVE's view is that the council did not apply the correct test when considering whether the PDR right to demolition applied to Garway School.
The Court of Appeal decision to allow us to challenge the previous High Court decision, which found in the Council's favour, is a major step for the campaign and the last chance to save this important and locally loved building.
Our application to the Court of Appeal was assembled by leading planning barrister Richard Harwood OBE KC and solicitor Susan Ring of Harrison Grant Ring, who will be representing SAVE again at the Hearing this spring.
As with all of SAVE's work, the ultimate aim of our campaign is to see this historic building sustainably reused and Garway's history and character preserved, while also providing attractive and much-needed new housing in the village.
SAVE had previously supported the council's refusal of the owner's first application to demolish the buildings in 2021 and its subsequent and detailed application to Historic England for the buildings to be granted protection by heritage listing. Historic England ultimately decided not to list the building but did emphasise the quality of the structure as being of high local historic and architectural interest.
Read all about the campaign so far by CLICKING HERE
Henrietta Billings, director of SAVE Britain's Heritage, says: We are delighted the Court of Appeal has now granted us permission to proceed with the appeal. This case raises important issues around the rights of owners to demolish buildings without full planning permission. The Court of Appeal has an opportunity to provide clarity on the threshold of uninhabitable buildings under the current regulations, and could therefore have far-reaching consequences for the future of thousands of unprotected historic buildings in England.
Located within the idyllic setting of rural Herefordshire, Garway Old School (as it is now known) was originally built as a board school, consisting of a schoolhouse with an adjoining residence for the headteacher. Designed in a decorative Gothic style by local architect E.H. Lingen Barker, the school was completed in 1877, and opened in 1878 with 50 schoolchildren.
Most board schools built at the time were concentrated in large cities where education provision was worse, which makes the Old School in Garway a rare example for such a small, rural village.
Prior to 1870, the local vicar educated the children of Garway in the Chapel of St Michael's Church. Following the Education Act of 1870, the Skenfrith School Board was established in 1874 and it was decided that a board school should be built in the village with a teacher's residence provided nearby. The architect appointed, E.H. Linger Barker, was Herefordshire born and had experience of designing schools in London. He also designed schools in Grosmont, New Inn (Cross Ash) and Norton, all across the Welsh border, for the Skenfrith School Board.
His design for Garway consisted of a large schoolroom with tall windows, a smaller schoolroom, and an adjoining headmaster's residence. There were two entrance lobbies, possibly to provide separate entrances for boys and girls. The building was multi-gabled and constructed of coursed rubble ashlar with a slate roof and crested roof tiles. The main schoolhouse displays external decoration which distinguishes it from the rest of the building such as a shield with the date 1877, Gothic brick hoodmoulds and recessed glazed quatrefoils.
Picture below is of the 1877 school building in the nearby village of Norton Skenfrith. Designed by the same architect and built in the same year as Garway, this historic building has been successfully converted into two houses for many years.
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