Wreake Valley Community College, now Wreake Valley Academy, the secondary school kids of the local area went to.
Why 'WVCC Prison'? well because at one point, someone climbed up onto the roof and spray painted that onto the side of the building...and it also looks like one.
The cache should be fairly easy to find, being vertially gifted is an advantage. If you don't want to be seen by muggles, avoid around 8-9am and 3pm...or term times.
It's also a Grade 2 listed building. Did you know that? I didn't when I sent to school here.
Reasons for Designation
Former Wreake Valley Community College (now academy) built in 1967-1971 to the designs of Gollins, Melvin, Ward and Partners for Leicestershire Education Department is listed for the following principal reasons:
Architectural interest:
* as an innovative and sculptural building that has survived almost intact, including the rare survival of a biology pond; * as a dramatic and iconic example of the work of Gollins, Melvin, Ward and partners, architects of considerable national repute;
Historic interest:
* the design of Wreake adopted a new pedagogical philosophy recognising the maturity of its students in contrast with the pre-war disciplinarian education implying, with its monumental character, that education is the unifying factor in a community, and imaginatively expressing the ideals of the progressive Leicestershire plan.
History
School building was both a symbolic aspiration of post-war Britain and an urgent need, driven by the ‘baby boom’, the raising of the school leaving age, planned new towns and estates and the reconstruction of bomb-damaged buildings. Programmes of new schools were coordinated and designed by local education authorities with loans and oversight from central government. Demand was led by prefabricated ‘kits of parts’, either sponsored by public authorities or developed privately. Elsewhere, where bricks and bricklayers were readily available, traditional techniques were adapted to incorporate large windows and flat roofs. Collaboration between architects and educationists could result in expressive plans which facilitated patterns of learning and movement. The requirement for abundant daylight and outdoor access led to dispersed layouts, a trend which was countered by tight cost limits and constrained sites. In the best examples child-scaled proportions, landscaping, bright colour schemes or works of art combined to create a distinctive visual aesthetic.
The 1944 Education Act divided schooling into primary and secondary stages with a break at age 11. Most authorities implemented selective schemes, building secondary modern schools with smaller numbers of grammar and technical schools. The London County Council, Coventry and the West Riding of Yorkshire pioneered single-stream comprehensive schools, which took all children within a given catchment area; non-selective education became increasingly widespread from the mid-1960s. Compact or multi-storied blocks were favoured for their small footprints and architectural potential, although educationists generally favoured informal, single-storey layouts where space permitted. Larger schools could support more specialist subjects and a large sixth form. Pastoral care and dining were sometimes organised around mixed-age ‘houses’, horizontal year groups or lower, middle and upper schools. In response to the 1963 Newsom report, the raising of the leaving age to 16 and the trend for more pupils to stay on at secondary schools became more college-like in character, with more private study, centralised resources and the integration of sports and community facilities.
Leicestershire was a pioneer in the design of educational buildings as a result of the renowned Leicestershire Plan which was devised in 1957 by Stewart Mason, Director of Education 1947-1971. Its advanced approach to teaching, together with government cost restrictions which made corridors too expensive, had an effect on design. There was a move away from self-contained classes to mixing across groups, encouraging use of the entire school by all the children. Flexible and centralized planning was first applied to primary schools, with open teaching areas grouped round a central library, quiet study room, and assembly area, sometimes on a circular plan or in the form of pavilions around the central core.
Leicestershire, took a different approach to the upper and lower ends of the secondary school range. Mason’s was a selective scheme in which secondary moderns became 11-14 Junior High Schools. At the age of 14 the brighter pupils, started two-year Ordinary Level courses in the grammar and technical schools, the others staying for a final year of compulsory education in the High Schools. The plan was compatible with the county’s existing building stock.
Increased emphasis on private study and centralised resources led to a greater convergence in the planning of secondary schools and colleges from c.1970. In Leicestershire, a ‘new wave’ of school plans emerged at Manor High School, Oadby (finished 1968); Bosworth College, Desford (1967-1970 by Gollins Melvin Ward (GMW)); Wreake Valley College, Syston (1969- 1971, also GMW) and Countesthorpe (1967-1970 by Farmer and Dark). Flowing plan-forms of teaching areas, focused around a central library or resource centre, encouraged private study and small group project work. Sixth-form, youth and adult facilities were separated out, as were sports facilities, creating an amorphous plan with a central core and long limbs. The Leicestershire schools were widely published in the architectural journals, where they were favourably compared with John Bancroft’s 1,725-place Pimlico School in Westminster, built in 1967-1970 (demolished 2010).
Wreake Valley is the most architecturally striking of the new Leicestershire colleges, built in 1967-1971 by Gollins Melvin Ward and Partners. It was designed to house 1440 pupils aged 14-19, and was planned with both adult and youth facilities to serve the whole community. It was completed in September 1971 and cost about £750,000. Its monumental scale is meant to signify that education is the supreme unifying factor in a community, not only up to school leaving age but continuing beyond it. ‘In secular times, the school replaces the cathedral as the centre and symbol of our aspirations’ (Glass Age, 1974)
Rendered in cream coloured tiles the three-storey ziggurat comprises a double-height resources centre set over a fully-raked auditorium, ringed by classrooms and a sixth form block. The compact plan is a response to the poor ground conditions, a result of coal or gravel extraction, and the building was over-engineered in anticipation of being a storey higher. The open-plan, single storey science and crafts area are lit from above and spread around a central sculpture court, although no sculpture was placed there a moulded-concrete pond provides a calm water feature known as the biology pond. Richard Padovan, writing in the Architectural Review, described its appearance in its typical East Midlands suburbia as ‘a monumental building amid so much democratic drabness, it gives an immediate feeling of uplift and anticipation: a sense that life is an adventure’, and later in the same article as a ‘major public building, open to all and owned by all – the socialist cathedral’.
Wreake Valley College was built on a 50-acre site in rural countryside with a plan to build a high school on the site in the future that was never realised. There were 25 acres providing facilities for football, rugby, hockey, tennis, netball and athletics. There are also two large physical education blocks, connected to the building by a covered walkway, which are fitted out for badminton, basketball, golf and cricket practice, in addition to normal gymnasium activities. The area between the two blocks was designated for a swimming pool but this has never been built and is now home to port-a-cabin classrooms.
The building retains its overall appearance as designed but has been modified in places; all the elevational windows have been replaced with uPVC windows, retaining the same characteristics and proportions, but the roof lights remain as original. In the library area on the first floor, the spiral stair has been removed and the library gallery has been enclosed to create an additional classroom. Two lecture theatres on the first floor had raked seating originally but these have been removed to create more flexible teaching spaces. Likewise, the administration block, adjacent to the library/resource area has seen some modifications with the removal and insertion of partition walling to make the office spaces more conducive to modern working practices.
In around 2007-2008 the crafts and painting and drawing areas were reconfigured and many of the partitions were either moved, removed or new partitions added. All concertina, sliding partitions have been removed. Part of the science block also underwent change with the insertion of stud wall partitioning. While a new chimney adjacent to the boiler room attached to the rear of the building, serves the updated heating system the original chimney remains but is not functional.
A passenger lift has been inserted into the right side of the entrance foyer and self-supporting canopy’s have been erected outside the main entrance, outside the external access to the sixth form and adult education block and also within the sculpture court to offer protection from extreme weather. A small, freestanding kiosk, selling food also stands within the sculpture court. When first built a raised area of rock landscaping adorned the terrace outside the main entrance but this has now been levelled. The roofs of the two gymnasium buildings were re-roofed in 2014 replicating the original structure.
Shamelessly copy/pasted from Historic England.org.uk.