Claremont Academy is an independent, state-funded grammar school (admits students on the basis of potential academic achievement) and sixth form schooling for the St. Mary Mede catchment area including providing boarding facilities for those who wish to benefit from the school’s exceptonal academic record or are in receipt of a Challenger-Wildeman Foundation Scholarship.
As a result, Claremont Academy has the largest publicly acknowledged percentage of exotic students enrolled of any public school in the UK (excluding dedicated meta-human establishments like the Pryde Foundation Preparatory Institute).
Campus
The school has a unique reddish tint to the sky above the school itself. According to Professor Dalus this ws caused by a dimensional breach created during the Terminus invasion resulting in a permanent aurora caused by hyperfield leakage crystallising local space-time 100m above the school. Some students however still claim the haze is due to the school testing chemical weapons on its pupils.
The main school buildings and campus set on the level ground to the South-West of the mansion are as modern as any 21st century structure, thanks to the funds poured into the project by the Challenger-Wildeman Foundation and personally from Duncan Summers and his family trust.
The two storey modern school has a separate reception and study building and enjoys every modern convenience including its own black fibre network.
Chapel
The original St. Thomas Aquinas Church located on the grounds opposite the main campus was completely destroyed during the Terminus invasion. It has been rebuilt as a modern multi-faith chapel while retaining any surviving aspects of the original church. The chapel does not have its own minister or priest in residence, however services are held here every Friday and Sunday by visiting local ministers on a rota.
Stryfe Mansion
The ‘Big House’ is a two-storey mansion, itself picturesque and said to be unchanged since the late 19th Century. Indeed, walking along the manicured lawns and admiring the Victorian-style stone-built building, one feels transported back to a different era. The fact is, though, between the various fires that plagued the Heights, the re-modelling of the grounds from private estate to private school, and the damage incurred by the Terminus Invasion, little of the original buildings remain. The mansion architecture has been kept authentic, and some of the buildings still have their original brickwork (reused over the years).
There are also rebuilt stables and outhouses (off the map) which are used to store grounds equipment. A treehouse is situated in the Raven Woods.
For all the remodelling and the renovations, the mansion, church and school campus are too old to have shared all her secrets, and whatever Summers and his students think they’ve uncovered of its past, they’ve only just scratched the surface.
Dormitories
There are 3 separate three-storey dormitories (Drummond House, Britannia House and Albion House) set round three sides of a garden across the playing fields from the main campus. It is located on the edge of the Raven Woods.
Each floor has 20 dorm rooms, two rooms for a teacher or resident assistant, separate girl’s and boys’ showers and toilet rooms, two common rooms (both have a small TV, a couch, a few chairs, and a pool table, air hockey table, football table, or other various fun activity – a different kind on each floor; one is for students to relax in and one used by teachers/Residential Assistants (RA’s), and two stocked small kitchen areas (one for the students, and one exclusively for the use of the teachers/RA’s). Each dorm room comes equipped with a desk and chair, closet, twin beds, and a set of shelves.
The basement contains a large Community Room with another small Kitchen, Laundry Room, Indoor Bike Storage, Music/Multipurpose Room and additional storage for students luggage and trunks.
The ground floor contains a Lobby/Mailbox area, a staff restroom/study/office, Public Restrooms (2), Conference Room, Vending Room and 4 Single Occupancy Rooms (for the house prefects).
There are two floors above with male and female students sharing each floor (with females on one side of the building and males on the other). The lifts are located next to the stairwells (not shown) and are kept sealed unless opened by a key provided to staff or prefects. Yrs 1 – 3 occupy the First Floor and Yrs 4 – 6 the second floor of each dormitory.
The Terminus Invasion Memorial Rock is located in the dorm gardens with a plaque listing the name of the ten individuals both supers and students who died that day at the school.
Student Rooms for Years 1 to 4 as shown.
The majority of students in Years 5 and 6 have a room to themselves.
Hero Certification Programme (HCP) Facility (also known as ‘Down Below’)
Details of the secret underground training facility can be found here.
School Security
There are two entrances into the school. The Reception and Study area is located at the North-west of the grounds and is used by visitors (including parents) and by most pupils being dropped off or picked up by their parents.
The main school gates are located further down the road and are accessed by twin gates that fold into the side of the gatehouse and is operated by Camille and her security staff (two of whom are always in the grounds at all times). The gates have the school crest and motto on them. When one gate is open, the second set are sealed and will not open until the first set of gates have been locked shut.
School buses enter the grounds through this entrance and park while its non-residential students decamp and enter the school via the southern entrance and delivery vehicles drive round the main building to the loading bay located next to the Eastern football pitch.
There is an old red BT telephone box located just outside the gates which now houses a video phone system linked to the gatehouse or main reception in the main building and can act as a lift to the underground tunnel system that links with Down Below.
Some pupils claim to have seen people enter the kiosk and then subsequently vanish.
The school walls are built of stone and are over 6 metres high and topped with anti-climbing spikes and completely surround the school grounds. The River Mercia flows through the grounds and students know that its possible to leave the grounds by wading through the shallows and under the wall, though its not unknown for students to accidentally fall in the water getting in and out of the grounds.
Student ID badges must be worn at all times whilst in school grounds.
Staff Bungalows
Most staff commute to the school but there are some staff who prefer to live with their families on the premises in the bungalows provided while Mr Summers and visiting tutors reside in Stryfe Mansion and House Masters and RA’s live in the dormitories when on duty.
Grounds
The Cursed Brook or Coven’s Curse runs through Raven Wood underground and the water from there exits by the brambles on the banks where the water starts to run blood-red due to dissolving minerals in the rocks. There it joins the River Mercia which runs through the North-East edge of the grounds and down to the nearby town of St. Mary Mede.
(for more information on St. Mary Mede, click here)
For an abbreviated history of Saxon Heights and the school click here
Growing up Meta, UK-Style! 