Wreake Valley Academy

Wreake Valley Academy

Former Wreake Valley Community College, now an academy, built between 1967 and 1971 to designs by Gollins Melvin Ward and Partners for Leicestershire Education Department.

The college is constructed around a steel structural frame on piled foundations. The first and second floor external frames are formed of 13 lattice trusses spanning 50 feet to 90 feet, supporting roof beams above and floor beams below on steel hangers. Externally, precast concrete cladding units with unglazed tiles cast into the panels are attached to the frame. Internally, the trusses are lined with studding and foil-backed plasterboard. The floors comprise four half-inch thick in-situ reinforced concrete slabs at first and second floor levels, timber joists to the roof, and Glass Reinforced Plastic to the roof lights above the library and central resource area. The sixth form and adult education block and the physical education blocks are more conventional in construction, built in brick and glass in contrast to the tile-clad main building.

The plan is roughly square, organised around a central core containing an assembly hall and auditorium at ground floor level with a two-storey high library and resource area above. Teaching areas are grouped around the resource centre. A drama workshop is positioned adjacent to the main stepped auditorium, providing a central drama, music and dancing complex linked to music rooms, painting and drawing areas, housecraft, and wood and metal workshops and science teaching areas. The sixth form and adult education block extends to the north-west, while to the north-east a pair of physical education gymnasiums are attached by a covered walkway.

The south-west facing front elevation is characterised by a slightly off-centre glazed entrance with an arched Perspex canopy. The college rises in three storeys arranged in a terraced, stepped pyramid of successively receding levels, creating a ziggurat appearance. The ground floor walls are slightly battered, receding towards the top, while the upper two floors are again battered with bases that turn inwards slightly, a feature thought to provide clerestory glazing to teaching areas below. Flat terraces surrounding each storey incorporate roof lights offering natural light to classrooms and supplementing the relatively narrow windows on all elevations. The exterior treatment is consistent throughout, with single and double width cladding panels used alternately across all elevations of the core building. Double width panels house a pair of vertically proportioned windows, except on corner panels which are blank. Windows have been replaced throughout in uPVC.

To the right of the entrance, the ground floor extends forward by seven bays to provide a single-storey science block, which extends around the right side to incorporate the art department and continues to the rear to include the music department and boiler room. Attached to the rear via a covered walkway is a pair of large physical education gymnasiums, built in brown brick with clerestory windows and flat roof. The roofs and windows were replaced in 2014 replicating the original steel structural frame. Originally intended to house a swimming pool between the two blocks, the space is now occupied by mobile classrooms and storage.

The north-west elevation differs slightly, with an eight-bay recess providing parking and accommodating a vast brown-brick chimney. The sharply angled stack recedes from ground floor to roof, forming a dramatic contrast to the cream-coloured and relatively delicate tiles of the cladding. The chimney originally served the rear boiler room but has been replaced in function by a freestanding tubular-steel structure immediately behind it. Attached to the north-west elevation and extending north-west is the brick-built, flat-roofed sixth-form and adult education block, a single-storey building with a slightly raised roof over a central hall. Sets of three casement windows are recessed at regular intervals, though the space is mainly lit by clerestory windows. All windows and doors in this block have been replaced in uPVC. External access is gained through a recessed glazed double door, above which sits a freestanding curved Perspex canopy.

The principal entrance opens into an open plan foyer with regularly spaced square plan columns supporting the floor above. To the left are small offices, toilets and fixed tables and chairs outside the kitchen. In the far corner a corridor leads to the sixth-form block. To the right are stairs to the first floor, an inserted lift, and a corridor to the science block. Immediately ahead is the central core clad in tongue and groove panelling with two short flights of stairs leading into the raked auditorium, adjacent to which is the semi-sunken double-height drama workshop.

Above the auditorium on the first floor is the double-height library and resource area with timber-clad suspended ceiling in the centre surrounded by angled roof lights. A former gallery accessed via spiral stair, now removed, has been enclosed to create additional meeting rooms and offices on the second floor lit by roof lights. On the south-west side of the library is the administration block with small offices including the Head Teacher's Room and Staff Room. The library is surrounded on three sides by I.T., English and media classrooms, originally subdivided by sliding concertina partitions but now with inserted stud walls. The second floor surrounding the library core contains Humanities and Languages departments with classrooms lit by roof lights. WCs are positioned on all floors.