Royal School for the Blind, Liverpool
Situated at 6 Commutation Row, Liverpool, opposite the potteries of Shaw's Brow (now William Brown Street), two recently erected houses were rented by the charity for the sole use of the school.
They were much too small and by 1800 enough money had been raised to erect a purpose-built school nearby, on the site later occupied by the Odeon cinema on London Road.
Designed by John Foster junior (later Architect & Surveyor to Liverpool Corporation) the school was now well established and would stay on this site for the next 50 years.
"[citation needed] In 1819, a chapel was opened by the school on adjoining land, with a connecting tunnel for the pupils to avoid the road and traffic above.
Foster was asked to draw up plans and, being fresh from a tour of Greece, the classical influence was captured in the Doric frontage to the building.
[citation needed] As Lime Street Station began to expand at the height of Railway Mania, pressure was brought to bear on the owners of local properties to make way for it.
The new school building, designed by Arthur Hill Holme, and erected alongside the chapel facing Hardman Street, opened in 1851, with 85 pupils.
[citation needed] With the passing of the Elementary Education (Blind and Deaf Children) Act 1893, the Hardman Street school could not provide the required facilities laid down by the new legislation.
A new extension was opened in 1932 on the same site, designed by the architects Anthony Minoprio and Hugh Spencely,[7] which provided additional work space, recreation rooms, offices and a sales shop for the goods manufactured by the students.
[citation needed] During the Second World War, both the Wavertree and Hardman Street sites were evacuated with staff to Rhyl in North Wales, moving together on 1–2 September 1939.
[8] The Wavertree site continued under the headship of Derek Marks from 1960, who, keen for the school to modernise, quickly introduced the Perkins Brailler.
With only two machines in the country, both owned by the Royal National Institute of Blind People, he placed an order for 60 with the bemused American manufacturers.
[citation needed] The school was moving into a successful phase under Marks and his staff, who were keen to introduce new ideas and revolutionary techniques where possible.
Six columns in triple sections, their capitals and plinths, were found lying in the undergrowth at Camphill in Woolton, where they had lain undisturbed for 60 years.
[citation needed] In 2011, the school was cited as one of the reasons (along with local blind charity Bradbury Fields) for UK supermarket Sainsbury's choice to use a store in nearby Woolton for its trial of Braille signage.
