Greasley Beauvale School, on the corner of Dovecote Road and Mill Road, which Lawrence attended from 1890 to 1898, was recently sold by Savills. At auction it failed to meet the reserve price of £250,000 and was subsequently sold privately, apparently for conversion into housing.
It is an impressive building with three wings which meet at the central entrance shown in the photo. As an indication of the birth rate in the district when it was built in 1878, it was designed to hold 550 children, including 150 infants. With class sizes well over 50 it must have been a daunting place to teach in.
Although Lawrence later went on to win a county scholarship to Nottingham High School from here, with the help of the headmaster's coaching, he at first found the school's atmosphere oppressive. Being a sensitive and rather frail child he found playground life difficult to cope with, and some of the antipathy he later felt for Eastwood may be traced back to his suffering at the hands of more boisterous boys.
It will be interesting to see how the developers use the link with Lawrence in marketing the maisonettes.
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