The Big Fire: 1st November 1999
On Monday 1st November 1999, local residents of Knutsford School woke to find that their local school was on fire.
By 7.00am, the school was ablaze from end to end and by 8.15 am as staff arrived for their INSET day, the school had been destroyed. Parents, children and the staff were devastated to find that their local school, which had been celebrating it’s 60th anniversary year, had been destroyed. All that was left was a dining room and a block of 4 classrooms. The fire continued to smoulder for several hours. Brian Nicholson was the Headteacher at the time.
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| Firemen still putting out the smouldering roof. | Our school destroyed – no roof and no more building! | The fire went along the roof of the whole building as you can see. |
In the end the decision was made to bulldoze the remaining walls.
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That day, a local authority team began a contingency plan to rebuild the school. The first phase was to bring in temporary, free standing classrooms. These arrived within days. Then a complete temporary school was built on the school field as the new school was being built on the old school’s footprint.
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Then the hard work of re-building the school started. It was hard for the whole community but we all embraced the hardship with smiles on our faces and carried on!
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Finally, nearly 3 years later, children moved into the super new building. 