Abbey Gate College is an independent coeducational day school set in beautiful grounds at Saighton Grange, some three miles south of the City of Chester.

The Senior School admits children at the age of 11 and provides education up to University entrance. The College also admits pupils of Junior School age to its Junior Department at Aldford School.

We provide a caring environment; we are proud of our relationship between teaching staff and their pupils. No child at Abbey Gate College or Aldford School will feel lost; everyone is made to feel important in at least one area of the educational process.

We hope that you will enjoy reading this prospectus and that you will visit Abbey Gate College to see us in action. We are always happy to meet parents and children - you will be most welcome.

The College encourages its students:

To aim for academic excellence
To show care and adopt a responsible approach to the community
To develop as mature, confident citizens

The Junior Department

The Junior Department of Abbey Gate College opened in 1993. Formerly housed at the main school site at Saighton, the Department moved to Aldford for the academic year 1996-7. In a very short time Aldford School has established a firm reputation for its happy and secure learning environment with small classes, excellent facilities and caring staff.

Pastoral Care

Each year is divided into two or three forms for tutorial and pastoral needs; form tutors have the first responsibility for the welfare, discipline and work of the pupils in their care. Every half-term an effort card is issued to each pupil and regular parents evenings take place throughout the year.

Sixth Form

Following success at GCSE our pupils are expected to enter the Sixth Form where the Senior School curriculum is available in full with the addition of Politics, Business Studies, Psychology and English Language

The College takes great care to ensure that Sixth Formers take up courses in higher education for which they are most suited. We pride ourselves on the fact that students who successfully complete their courses do not leave without a place in higher education. A separate Sixth Form Prospectus is available from the College Secretary.

Music and Drama

A school play or musical is produced every other year. Our boys and girls regularly win class awards at the Chester Speech and Drama Festival specializing in acted scenes: Prose/Poetry Reading, Improvisation, English Speaking Board, Acted Scenes and Mime.

The College is also expected to achieve two or three class wins at least at the Festival every year.

The College is well known throughout the area for the outstanding quality of its music.

The Chapel Choir visits St Paul's Cathedral every year and tours abroad have included Holland, Germany, Denmark and the USA. Abbey Gate College, among other schools, is prominent in the education of Cathedral Choristers, for which Bursaries are available.

Sport

Pupils are regularly sent for trials for Chester and District and County Teams.

The college has had pupils selected to represent Cheshire in Hockey, Cricket and Rugby and has produced national athletes in the last few years. Tours abroad have included Hockey to Holland; Football to Malta; both in 1997.

Facilities include extensive playing fields, tennis courts, sports hall (four badminton courts, tennis court, volleyball, indoor nets, indoor hockey, basketball etc.

Scholarships

Academic scholarships are awarded following the results of the Entrance Examination. For musical talent, three awards are offered including Music Exhibitions at Year 7 and 6th Form level and the Daphne Herbert Choral Scholarship.

During their time at Abbey Gate College pupils develop from children into young adults. In these vital years, we believe that parents should be closely involved. Parents evenings are held regularly, and more informal evenings are organised by the Social Committee.

Old Saightonians

All pupils are encouraged to join the Old Saightonians Association.

Pupils are encouraged to take an active part in our extra-curricular programme: activities include music tuition (brass, woodwind, strings, singing, piano, guitar, etc.); speech and drama; school musicals; outdoor pursuits; Duke of Edinburgh Award; English Speaking Board and Young Enterprise Scheme.

The Building

Saighton Grange was the principal country house of the Abbots of Chester. Before the Conquest the manor of Saighton was held by the secular canons of St Werburgh, Chester. but in 1092 Hugh Lupus. Earl of Chester. transformed their church into the Benedictine Abbey of St Werburgh. and Saighton became part of the abbey holdings. Licences to crenellate were granted in 1272 and 1399. but the only part of the medieval building which remains today was built later. This is the gatehouse erected by Abbot Simon Ripley about 1490. Ripley was an energetic builder who brought new impetus to the works at the abbey church, completing the reconstruction of the south transept and the central tower. At Saighton his badge, a wolfs head, is carved at the base of the oriel window.

Upon the Dissolution the abbey became Chester Cathedral and the abbey lands were divided. The manor of Saighton passed through many hands before it was purchased in the 1840s by the Grosvenors, owners of the huge neighbouring Eaton estate.

The 2nd Marquess of Westminster was at this time modernising Eaton Hall, employing William Burn to overcome some of its considerable practical problems. To improve Saighton. which was to be used by the Earl Grosvenor heir to Eaton. The Marquess’ chose Edward Hodkinson, a local architect who had designed some cottages on the estate. Apart from the medieval gatehouse. all was rebuilt. Two 17th-century Ranking wings recorded in an engraving in Ormerod, one with the remains of a garderobe, were demolished, and the gatehouse became the porch to an entirely Victorian house. The west wing was begun in 1861, the service wing in 1867 and the east wing in 1876. In the meantime the 3rd Marquess had commissioned Alfred Waterhouse. one of the most progressive architects of his day, to remodel his seat; the mechanical and unscholarlv Tudor of Saighton must have looked completely outmoded in comparison.

The great feature of Saighton Grange is the gatehouse. a rare example in Cheshire of medieval secular stone architecture. By the end of the 15th century a heavy crenellated tower was no longer a defensive necessity, and the outline of the gatehouse is as much a picturesque as a practical device. High in a merlon of the battlements is a canopied figure of the Virgin. and below is a small decorative oriel window.

An appearance of strength comes from the way the walls are jettied out over massive angle corbels resting on Ranking buttresses. The tail arched gateway now leads to the front door of the Victorian house. What this door reveals comes as something of a shock. Instead of a Tudor-style hall with heavy oak panelling and stone fireplace. the visitor enters an airy galleried room in the Regency style. To the left are two big Ionic doorcases with fluted half-columns, and directly ahead is an elegant semi-circular staircase illuminated by a shallow domed lantern. Closer examination of the staircase reveals that it is constructed of reinforced concrete, and indeed this whole classical interior dates only from 1957. The doorcase and the mahogany doors to the library, brought from Dauntsey Park near Chippenham. are the only genuine Neoclassical features. This transformation was carried out for the 4th Duke of Westminster who used Saighton Grange as his seat after Eaton Hall was abandoned. The architect was John Dennys, the 5th Duke’s brother-in-law, who was later to design the present Eaton Hall.

Though the creation of a grand entrance hall was an ambitious concept. the shallowness of its classical detail does not bear close scrutiny. This weakness was less apparent when the house was richly furnished with the Grosvenor treasures, but in its present sparse condition the eve focuses too much on the architecture. The most appealing rooms are those within the medieval gatehouse. The first contains the little oriel window, and above is a tower room with a painted beam bearing the motto Tune cede ma/is sed contra audentior Ito. This Victorian sentiment. 'Do not give way to difficulties but rather strive on boldly’, forms the motto of the school which now uses the house.

Aerial Photograph of the school
by Frank Thomas

The Gardens

Images of the Gardens in Winter 2006

Images of the gardens in Spring 2006

One of the subtleties of designing a garden is to manipulate changes of level to reinforce the spatial character of the site and of the layout which evolves from it.The gardens at Abbey Gate College, Saighton Grange, situated some four miles south of Chester, are a little masterpiece of garden design and demonstrate this technique of creating interest from the way the levels are handled.The entrance itself is through an impressive gap in the lovely red sandstone cliff which marks the entrance to the Eaton Estate village of Saighton, as it does also to the sister village of Eccleston on the west side of the River Dee. These attractive villages were both quarried for building stone from the visible rock outcrops, and Saighton Grange itself is built in this warm red coloured stone.The entrance is marked by two grey willow-leaved pears (Pyrus salicifolia) sited (incongruously for the setting and markedly out of scale) on mown grass lawns on either side of the gate. The short drive winds gently upwards to a gravel forecourt in front of the medieval gatehouse entrance to the building. This building (apart from its entrance) is mainly Victorian in style and is beautifully situated on a south-facing slope.

The South Gardens

From the front doors of the building one's attention is immediately drawn to a symmetrical vista seen through a narrow gap in the clipped yew hedge which surrounds the forecourt. This view encourages a straight descent down stone steps and a narrow path of diagonally laid red sandstone paving slabs. The path leads through the centre of two attractive rectangular lawn gardens strongly enclosed by further clipped yew hedges. These gardens are beautifully laid out in both flower beds and borders. The upper is known as The Rose Garden (from the collection of hybrid tea roses) and the lower as The Grey Garden from the collection of herbs grown there.At the end of the path there is a long well-planted herbaceous border backed by a low sandstone wall and fronted by a narrow path. The herbaceous border is a twentieth century addition (it is not shown on a plan of 1901) and at its centre has a semi-circular ledge to mark the south end of the walk from the Gateway known appropriately as "The Bulge".

Within the herbaceous border can be found fine groups of flowering plants including bocconia, yellow scabious, tradescantia, achillea, senecio, carpenteria hemeroca-1lis and alstromeria.There are two tall Lombardy Poplars symmetrically placed at the end of the perspective view down the path. They were planted to commemorate two soldiers, the Grenville twins, who were killed in the First World War. Between these great fastigiate trees the visitor may pause to gaze at a framed picture of countryside forming a glorious panorama of grazed fields, irregularly shaped woods and the distant hills of Wales.On either side of these formal terraced gardens, behind their enclosing hedges, are two sloping lawns which indicate, in contrast to the terrraces, the gradient of the slope. One lawn has on it two marvellous large mulberry trees so appropriate to the medieval character of the building. On the other lawn are mature horse chestnuts and a small parrotia pecsica which provides splendid autumn colour. The lawn, in the 19th century, contained "The Saints' Garden". A Country Life article of 23rd May 1908 described it thus:"It is brick paved and set out in alleys, squares, and shaped beds. Its planting has been carefully arranged to emphasise the canonical calendar, although the vagaries of our climate may sometimes interfere with the regular unfolding of some special flower on each succeeding Saint's Day in accordance with the plan and purpose of the designer."A photograph accompanying this article showed just how attractive was this garden with its trellis arch. The site is shown on Triggs 1901 plan but nothing now remains of this intriguing design concept. It had been used by local nuns as a retreat organised by the Duchess of Westminster, but when Sally, Duchess of Westminster arrived at Saighton Grange, the garden was in a state of extreme decay and was cleaned away.

And so we have three gardens in parallel in front of the building -an unusual but well proportioned division of ground and illustrating just how much character can be won from a shallow, even slope, without recourse to an Italian terrace where the whole view would have had to be revealed at once from the upper terrace and not, as we find here, delayed in space and time to provide enticing anticipation and surprise.An unusual additional part of the complex on the south side of the building is a "wing" of the garden which extends from the Mulberry Lawn southwards for some 150 feet to end at a field gate. There is an attractive curved brick path running between two sandstone wall banks planted with overhanging trees and shrubs. This is known as "The Cavalry Walk".

The West Gardens

Returning to the front entrance doors of the building we can now explore the upper garden to the north west of the building which is hidden by shrubs from the approach dr-ive. Here we f ind the sloping ground has been exploited with more variety and informality into a series of delightful terraced gardens, still small in scale but creating a sequence of garden spaces each with its own individual character deriving from the pleasing spatial quality given by the plants, the paving, the walls and the views.The most detailed of these areas is the charming little Fishpond Garden - a garden of paving and lawn outside the west frontage of the building where there is a small lily pool. Here also, there is an interesting collection of plants (including a magnificent specimen of the unusual Moroccan Broom (cytisus battandiari) and the smaller Spanish Gorse (genista hispanica) both flowering in June with groups of foxgloves. Adjacent to this group and framing the pool is a large bank of juniperus sabina beneath a small weeping birch. Behind this bank is a tall pink flowering mock orange with delightful sweet scent. Around the walls of the house we find a striking collection of wall plants: a large mass of the small yellow-leaved ivy (hedera helix "Buttercup") covers part of the grey-red sandstone wall with a honeysuckle, a pyracantha:, the Chinese gooseberry (actinidia chinensis) and a white flowered climbing rose also competing for attention.Beyond this paved garden we can ascend a curved flight of stone steps (which once had a stone arch) to the uppermost part of the garden, "The Long Bank", a lawn mpartment with a tall stone boundary wall giving shelter on the north side. In this garden we find a short cypress avenue and. some small geometric f lower beds which are unfortunately out of character with the rest of the garden. They were originally a part of the garden which was much favoured by the former Duke of Westminster.From the western end of the Long Bank there is a long brick-paved path which leads to another informal garden "The Sundial Garden" also with a well-mown lawn and a sandstone wall on which are spread some splendid climbing roses: the deep pink Rosa "Madame Gregoire Staechelm the light pink "Ophelia" and the shining white "Seagull". In this garden there is an opening in the shrub border. Looking through it, we apprehend that we are on top of the great sandstone cliff which was seen as we entered the site from the village approach road. There is also a brick-paved path along the top of the cliff with a splendidly rich assortment of rock plants flourishing in thedry-stone parapet wall.

So here we have an elevated viewpoint to provide a gentle touch of drama and a further example of the way in which a level change can be exploited to give visual excitement. Here the view west is also panoramic but the eye is immediately focussed on to a distant clock tower rising above the woods on thewest bank of the shallow valley of the River Dee. It is, of course the tower designed by Alfred Waterhouse for the 1870 Eaton Hall (demolished in 1962). he was also the designer of Manchester Town Hall, and saw no reason to alter the character of his architecture for a rural setting. To be reminded of Eaton Hall from this site is fitting, for the fourth Duke of Westminster used Saighton Grange as his country home after the last war when the great Waterhouse mansion had been rendered uninhabitable following Army occupation.

Conclusion

Saighton Grange was built originally by the Abbots of Chester as a country house and the ' 1498 Gatehouse still exists as the front entrance. The house itself was designed by E. Hodkinson and built in 1861 for the second Marquis of Westminster and enlarged in 1874 (Pevsner) when it became the home of Earl Grosvenor, the son and heir to the first Duke on his marriage in 1874 with a daughter of the tenth Earl of Scarborough.

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