As reported in the press recently, the Coventry School Foundation decided a few weeks ago to close King Henry VIII Pre – Prep School, known locally as Swallows. The School is located on the Firs, off Kenilworth Rd. across the road from The War Memorial Park. The School closed on July 3rd, with very little notice, giving parents very little time to make alternative arrangement for their children.
The Foundation stated that the school would be put on the market and sold to help ease “unsustainable financial pressures”. These financial pressures do not relate specifically to the school in question, but to the wider Coventry School Foundation. Whilst there are no details of the financial pressures faced by the Foundation there has been much national press coverage of the impact on the private educational sector from the combination of VAT being imposed on school fees and the removal of business rate relief.
Back in 2021, the Coventry Society along with Coventry Prep. School former pupils and the Jaguar Daimler Heritage Trust campaigned to have the principal building on the school site, one of Coventry’s most significant Georgian buildings, listed by Historic England. This was at a time previously when the future of the school was in doubt.
Historic England eventually refused the listing proposal, but this does not detract from the significance of the building and its setting in the Kenilworth Rd. Conservation Area. The Coventry Society will be monitoring any proposals emerging for the re-use of the school site and lobbying the City Council to ensure that whatever proposal emerge are sympathetic to the historic nature of the main school building and to the site’s important contribution to the Kenilworth Rd. Conservation Area.
This is the link to an article by the Coventry Society on the historic importance of the site written in 2021 at a time when the future of the site was previously a cause for concern. As part of the campaign the Society supported the installation of a blue plaque on the site.