Accommodation and facilities

The Shires has been converted from a former rectory and more recently a small hotel and provides an excellent, integrated setting in spacious grounds for the nine students' home and school.

Students who live at The Shires are housed in individual study bedrooms in the main residential section of the main building or in the adjacent cottage, Stonehouse Lodge. The students' social and dining areas are friendly, comfortable and inviting with space for students to play games as well as having easy access to soft rooms and sensory rooms.

In the main building, school is upstairs with three teaching classrooms, or along to the main hall for music and assemblies. Stonehouse Lodge provides a practical classroom, ideal for art and technology that is also fully equipped as a life skills teaching area.

The buildings and grounds are secure and students have full access to safely enclosed gardens. The newly constructed sensory garden provides a tranquil and peaceful setting for students to sit, play and relax, with fragrant and soothing flowers, as well as colourful and textured planting which provides interesting sounds, and encourages biodiversity. The adventure playground incorporates a trampoline, swing, grass mounds and log trail as well as an exciting water feature, wildlife pond and shaded play areas.

 

What Ofsted says..

The premises and accommodation are of very good quality.