The Story of Godre’r Graig Primary School

On the final day of the 2019 summer term, the children of Godre’r Graig Primary School returned from their end-of-year school trip to an unexpected scene. As they stepped off the buses, television crews were already assembled, and a letter was handed to each pupil: their school was closing—immediately. There would be no return in September.

The closure was abrupt and unexplained. There had been no storm, no subsidence, no emergency drill. The children and parents had been told nothing in advance.

The reason, the council said, was a geotechnical inspection report that raised concerns about a potential landslide risk from a disused quarry tip situated upslope from the school. This tip—associated with a sandstone quarry closed long before the school was built—had shown no visible signs of movement or distress. The school itself had stood undisturbed since 1908.

In the weeks and months that followed, the school was fenced off, its children relocated to temporary accommodation, and its building ultimately demolished. But as documents slowly emerged through Freedom of Information (FOI) requests, and community group Tegwch pressed for answers, a more complex story began to surface—one involving contracted consultants, conflicting inspection regimes, and a growing sense that the school may have been closed not by geology, but by politics and policy drift.

This is the story of Godre’r Graig Primary School: a school closed not by a landslide, but by layers of bureaucracy, media choreography, and strategic silence.