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Queen Mary School

Queen Mary school

Queen Mary school

The school was founded in 1930 as a girls' school and in 2000 merged with King Edward's to form KEQMS based in the King Edward building.

If you area past pupil then OAKS the alumni organisation can help you connect with others.

A significant archive of documents and historic items is maintained by a group of volunteers. You can browse the archive catalogue to see what items are held in it.

Queen Mary Building, Clifton Drive South

This building has the grandest entrance in the Borough of Fylde. Standing in a prominent position on Clifton Drive, its imposing front range has a central pedimented doorway with full height stone Corinthian columns. The hipped roof, with cupola and weather vane, rises above the balustrade. The architects were Thomas Taliesin Rees and Richard Holt of Liverpool, and the materials red brick with sandstone ashlars and Westmorland slate roof.

Originally Queen Mary School for Girls, it was built for the Lytham Schools Foundation by local contractor John Sutcliffe & Sons at a cost of £50,000. The School opened in September 1930, just two years after the extension of suffrage to women. It was officially opened by the Earl of Derby in November of that year, and under the leadership of its first headmistress, Miss Doris Bailey, the School quickly established itself as one of the best girls’ secondary schools in the county.

The original Queen Mary building is little disturbed despite later additions to the School. The original door and window joinery remain as do the full-length parquet corridors connecting the central entrance hall with all other ranges, and central assembly hall with vaulted roof and moulded plaster panels. Access to the upper front floor is via central twin staircases leading to the front corridor and tiered assembly hall gallery. The ground floor cloakrooms, formerly for junior and senior girls, retain cast iron columns, benches and numbered pegs. There are two landscaped quadrangles on either side of the assembly hall. 

When the Government abolished the assisted places scheme, pupil intake fell. In 1999 Queen Mary School was merged with the adjacent King Edward VII School for Boys. In 2001 the Governors announced that the Queen Mary building was no longer required and offered it for sale. Despite being listed in December 2001 as “one of the best of its kind”, this landmark community building is now in danger of being all but destroyed by residential housing development.

from "The listed buildings of Lytham St. Annes" - Lytham St. Annes Civic Society 2003

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Queen Mary school

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