Back to School
Grenville College
Reunion Weekend 31 May - 2 June 2024
Many of you will know Moreton House as Grenville College, a boarding school based at Moreton for more than fifty years.
Moreton House, with Crabbe and Scott boarding houses on the bottom right, the rifle range on the top left, old stables, tuck shop and science labs. Date probably 1980s or early 1990s? Any clues that might pin down a date?
Grenville closed in 2009, but a number of former students and staff gathered for a reunion last weekend, 70 years after Grenville was founded.
Well over 100 old boys and girls, staff and families came back to the area to reminisce. They were treated to a big party with displays of memorabilia and a band made up of former students, a cricket match and drinks hosted by another old boy, plus the new owners of the old formal and walled gardens opened the grounds for the first time since they were sold. At Moreton House, we were delighted to welcome visitors to the house and grounds on a lovely sunny weekend.
A bit of history
Grenville College was founded in 1954, and originally based on Belvoir Road in Bideford. Shortly after opening, a house and sports fields on Abbotsham Road were added, and in 1957 the school purchased Moreton House from Sir Dennis Stucley. The school thrived as a specialist in dyslexia teaching, and by the mid 1990s had around 400 students. Grenville College merged with Stella Maris convent school in 1994 to become co-ed, and acquired and built a number of new boarding houses and other buildings around Bideford, but Moreton remained the hub of Grenville College right through to its closure in 2009. At that time, Grenville merged with Edgehill College, with which it had held long standing social ties, including a joint annual stage production, and a sixth form teaching alliance, and founded the Kingsley School, based on Northdown Road in Bideford. Moreton House and grounds were divided up and sold.
The lay of the land now
Many former students and staff were surprised by how different things are since the school closed. After the school closed, a local developer split the grounds up and now there are lots of different owners and uses of the grounds.
Opposite the old Londonderry farm estate, the area between Abbotsham Road and the driveway to Moreton House, including the sites of Crabbe House and Scott House are now a housing estate called College Park. This was finished in 2018, with Crabbe and Scott Houses demolished in 2017. If you would like to spend your dotage reminiscing about the school, there is a care home in the middle called Moreton Court. Work is just beginning on another 250 houses on the other side of the driveway between Moreton Lodge and Higher Winsford farm.
College park viewed from Moreton Court. That’s the old sports field in the background
The Old Stables, woodwork and metalwork rooms and pottery studios, were redeveloped by another developer into office units, and is now called the Old Stables Business Park
We purchased Moreton House, which was offered with 5 acres of the garden, at the end of 2014. Our boundary now runs between us and the stables, along the wall beside the tennis court, and we have the terraced lawn with the large rhododendron stand and ceder of Lebanon and the lawn to the east up to the old tree line, but not the sports field or the formal and walled gardens.
The grounds that are part of Moreton House today. We have created a secret garden inside the rhododendrons and built a smaller walled garden and garage behind it. The kids’ club is now our woodland car park. The rest of the gardens are separately owned.
Some of the sports field is still part of Bideford College school, some now housing, and the path from the house to the sports field and Moreton Park stores is no more.
The walled gardens, old ponds, Moreton Woods, tennis court and old science block is now in the hands of a development company headed by a couple of your alumni. They opened the grounds so that visitors could walk (or for old times, cross-country run) all the way down to the old walled garden and ponds. Many recognised the remains of the giant tree that blew down.
In 1989 this tree was documented to be the largest in the country, but was lost in the 1990 storms.
The walled garden looking very different today.
The last piece of land between the old boarding houses and main house is in the process of being sold at the moment. Whoever buys it will become the proud owners of the main Moreton House drains and gas supply pipe and meter. We are expecting an ‘interesting’ few months ahead!
The reunion weekend was organised by former students, and the main event was a large party, hosted at The Big Sheep. Lots of old photos and memorabilia were displayed around the venue, and guests were entertained by a band made up of former students.
Before the big party, there was a cricket match a nearby Westleigh cricket ground, drinks hosted by former student Rob Braddick at his Bideford nightclub Crabby Dicks. At Moreton House we opened our bar to serve coffees and snacks and a few drinks througout the weekend, with a brunch service on the Sunday morning. Those who visited would have been able to enjoy a coffee or a beer in a room that might have been their dormitory, their gym, their preschool classroom or their assembly room, depending on when they were at school. A handful of alumni booked a room to stay for the weekend.
Some remembered this as a dorm room, others a preschool classroom - now it’s our bar
We had a small display of things we have found in the house. We found plenty of old bottles, cans, socks and school books hidden beneath the floorboards, plus quite a number of letters. The oldest were from the 1940s and addressed to children at Kingsmead School, a Hastings-based boarding school that was evacuated to Moreton during the war.
We also displayed a few before and after pictures from our renovations.
The vaulted corridor when we arrived - and now. The floorboards were so rotten at the far end, we had actually been walking over suspended lino!
Some remember this as a drying room for rugby kit, for others it was a computer room. Originally the Victorian scullery and now a bedroom. You can come and stay here.
One of the main function rooms before, during and after renovation. We call this the club room now - and it was one of the rooms open for the reunion brunch. It was a gym (the netball hoop on the wall gave a clue as to why the mouldings weren’t all complete) and before that a dorm. Even earlier, before the school days, it was the library.
The toilet block in the courtyard, before, during and after. There are so many more transformation photos - some you’ll find on our social media accounts, and hopefully they will eventually be featured in blogs - get in touch to be notified when we add a new blog or give us a follow on instagram and facebook.
Here’s one old school layout that we found. Can anyone date it?
The school floor plan from displayed as the school closed. This was hung by the old fire panel.
For those who want to stay in touch with your old school, Kingsley continues to house the Grenville College archives and manages the alumni society. The member of staff who used to run the society retired recently, but even before that, she had lost touch with many because of the new data protection laws. There are a couple of active facebook groups for informal chat - let’s hope this reunion has been the catalyst for a finding old friends and renewing the contact between you all.
And while Moreton House no longer has any formal connection with the school, we are always happy to hear from former students and staff, and always appreciate your support with our project to rehabilitate the house.
Thanks to everyone who visited and bought something during the reunion - whether a coffee, a cake, a brunch, mug or postcard. Restoring Moreton is an ongoing project and a costly one, and every penny we earn goes straight back into the house. We are currently working on the first floor flat above the bay windows - while saving the fabulous wallpaper!
For anyone still in the area, we hold occasional social events, pop-up dining options, and open days for the local community and friends - if you would like to be notified about upcoming events at the house, please get in touch and we’ll add you to our mailing list for information and VIP invitations.
If anyone would like to buy a souvenir, prints of this amazing illustration of Moreton House are available - we can post them out, framed, mounted or as a card or postcards. The image is by local artist Rachel Shute, who used to live at Moreton as a small child while her father was a music master.
Rachel has kindly gifted us the rights to the image, so that we can now use it to raise funds for the house.
We would be really grateful, however, if you would respect Moreton’s new role as a private house, and please do get in touch if you’d like to visit. We have on occasion found old school students driving around our garden or wandering around taking photos without our knowledge. It is a bit scary finding photos of our bedroom windows posted online, and we do have kids and rent the house out now for private functions, holidays and weddings, so we would appreciate if you’d make an appointment or at least ring the doorbell before you head off to explore the garden.
Best of all, we would love you to book to come and stay with us. We have some lovely self-catering spaces and guest rooms that can be booked for a holiday or short stay. We offer a small discount on accommodation and room hire to alumni - just let us know on your booking. If you come and stay, we will happily give you a private tour and show you behind the scenes.
Helen Phillips, June 2024
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