Chafford School, Ramsay nr Harwich, Essex.
I went to Chafford in about 1974. It's a stately mansion just outside of Dovercourt. It was formerly a remand home but changed to a residential school. A magnificent house with separate coach house and grounds, A modern school block including a full gymnasium on the right (see photo below) was added later.
From what I remember the stable and coach house was used by the gardening departement. See next photo.
It was a very unusual school, in that pupils that were not particularly academicaly inclined, were able to choose to from several classes that included: painting & decorating, gardening, brickwork and I think there was an electrical class as well. From that perspective it was a great school that could teach kids a trade at least, if nothing else.
People I remember were:
Reginald Arthur Swinford who was my teacher. The kids and staff referred to him as RAZ. Or as we called him, razzamataz. His initials being R.A.S. was how it came about. We called him Razamataz because he was nothing further from it. He walked a bit lopsised but he was the best teacher I ever had. He taught me about Pascal's triangle, Pythagoras's theorem and also made me precis the fron page of the newspaper regularly. It taught me to be succinct and he also made me copy a page of each letter of the alphabet in the style he had written it. To this day I thank him for it because it smatened up my penmanship.
Mr Gill was the PE teacher. Mr Passmore I think was the brickwork dept Mr Binns The gardening dept
Boys I remember are:
Thorogood Gary Gilling Malteese Partridge Paul Robinson (I think) Colin Murphy (Blond skinny lad) Terry Dempsey (possibly)