Jackson Street School.

Some seven years ago, the old school was sold to a commercial business for £150,000, then the deal fell through and the local Community Development Trust offered to purchase it for the same price. They wanted to develop the building as a community centre, heritage museum and small business centre. The situation was ideal as it was on the route from several sheltered housing complexes to the town’s main shops and would provide a convenient social venue for the residents. The playground would have been converted into public gardens, maybe even incorporating allotments to supplement a garden share scheme where people with gardens, but not the ability to manage them, would allow those with the opposite problems to help them out for the price of some garden produce. The whole plan had a lot of public support, 1600 people signed a petition and the people of Penicuik had already shown that they are qualified to take on such a project, they already run a local Recreation Centre, the Community Arts Centre and the cinema; somewhere, I still have a copy of the business plan.

For some reason, the cooncil don’t like The Trust and prevaricated for a couple of years until, apparently to get rid of the attentions of The Trust, they demolished the building at a cost of £53,000. As are many local buildings, it was made from local stone which had a high commercial value - so the cooncil brought in an enormous machine to grind the material into gravel to use for ballast so that, presumably, it now lies beneath some motorway. This happened nearly four years ago.

At long last there is progress, houses are being built on the site; they’re very close to the road and will not offer much in the way of green space that would be very welcome.

The Trust has moved on since then and has taken over a large walled garden, known as “The Secret Garden” and are running it as a community project selling organic produce; they have a hundred year lease on it at a pepper-corn rent. It is also running Pen-y-coe Press, a local business that came up for sale a couple of years ago and is taking the place that the school occupied in their grand scheme, but it is decidedly a second best.