St Georges
     Reception

A picture of the School reception building taken from Leasowe Road. The bike sheds used to be on the right just out of view.

Taken May 2005

St Georges School
Main Front View

This photograph was taken from the gate on Leasowe road and shows part of the original school building.

Taken May 2005

St Georges School
       Main Back Building

A picture of the back main building with playground in front.

Taken May 2005

St Georges School

"The Hut Classrooms"

This photograph was taken from the gate on Leasowe road and shows the hut or temporary classrooms. They were built prior to the Solar Building to manage the overflow.

Taken May 2005

St Georges School
    Sign at Front)

A picture of the sign in front of the Leasowe Road Gate.

The name Solar Campus taken from the unique design of the new building.

Taken May 2005

St Georges School 1

This photograph was taken from the gate on Leasowe road and shows part of the original school building.
One of the playgrounds is in the centre and you can just make out the new building at the back.

St Georges School 2
       (New Building)

A picture of the new building taken from the playground side. The tennis courts were just to the left. Smokers will recall the small passgage way at the left of the building leading to the playing field!

St Georges School 3

This photograph was taken from the  Leasowe road side and shows the original school building.

On the right you can just see the Circular frontage and main reception area.
This building housed the Art and Cookery rooms amongst others.

Sun School Facing an Eclipse

You can't blame us if we are not exactly mad about sun worship - it may have something to do with the climate.
On the other hand, we must be mad to cold-shoulder the sun when it could be earning us a cosy fortune in exports - the invisible kind.
The plain truth is that no one in Britain is excited about the sunshine school - the first building in the world to be heated by the sun.

The school was built in 1961, and for nearly five years the headmaster, Leslie Bradshaw, has not ordered a single bag of coal. And the stand-by central heating system has never been used.
"I've never felt chilly" says the head. "Lovely and warm," say the children. Now world production rights are there for the asking, but no one inside Britain's building industry seem to want to know.

The Japanese are keen to get an international licence. And Germany, Switzerland, Spain and France are almost certain to get local licences soon. And almost as certainly the gains of Emslie Morgan's genius, the first 20th century man to really harness the sun, are going to be lost from Britain.

From the back, St Georges solar secondary school in Leasowe road Wallasey is drab, not a single window and the school's massively thick roof and walls covered with slabs of plastic and foam.

On the bitterest mid-winter day it is always 60 degrees F. Inside St Georges. And in the summer the school is cooler than its sweltering neighbours. Panels inside the glass walls can be turned to deflect the heat or absorb it.

Mr. Charles Caven, Wallasey's deputy borough architect, was Emslie Morgan's immediate boss in the late 50's when Scot's "Morgie" as everyone new him, was getting his lifetime's belief in sun heating on paper. The masses of calculations were his. He never published them and he died in 1964. "Morgie was a genius," says Mr. Caven" and we miss him. Sometimes we cursed him and his involved ideas, but he infected us all with his enthusiasm.

"Now an industrialised building system based on his notes is needed, and there's a growing feeling that it won't be British. Morgie's was in it's infancy and there would have been many refinements." Patents broker Richard Dupont who has the job of finding the civil engineering expertise that can unlock Morgie's patented notes and crack them down to building site language say's . . . . .

Extract taken from an unknown Wallasey newspaper and written by Alfred Gibbon.