Bulldozers move in at lower school

A CHADDERTON school is consigned to the history books as bulldozers reduce it to a pile of rubble.

Demolition has started at Radclyffe Lower School, Broadway, to make way for the borough’s new £30 million Catholic high school.

The building was originally the first co-education grammar commissioned by Lancashire County Council, the education authority for the townships around Oldham until the local government changes of 1974.

It was opened in 1930 by the Earl of Crawford and Balcarres and the last mixed speech day was held at the Free Trade Hall in Manchester in 1960.

The school then became all-girls — with the boys moving to a new building in Chadderton Hall Road — and later Radclyffe Lower School.

The school bell sounded for the last time in February when pupils moved into the new £28 million Radclyffe High School in Hunt Lane.

Last month the Bishop of Salford, the Rt Rev Terence Brain, chose the Broadway site as the location for the borough’s new RC high school which will open in 2012.