English Block

The English Block at Macquarie Boys Technology High School was a standard postwar government classroom building on a 10-hectare campus in Rydalmere. The school was constructed in the late 1950s under the NSW Government Architect's Branch, during the tenure of Government Architect Cobden Parkes, as part of western Sydney's postwar education expansion. Brick and concrete construction, covered walkways between buildings, the same institutional typology repeated across hundreds of NSW government schools of the period. The school itself had a longer history. A post-primary boys' school operated in Parramatta from 1920, eventually becoming Macquarie Boys' High School in 1955 before relocating to the purpose-built Rydalmere campus at the end of 1957. The word "Technology" was added to the name in 1989, reflecting a curriculum shift toward trade and technical skills. NSW Education Minister John Della Bosca announced the closure on 23 August 2007, citing enrolments of 220 students and a projection of 180 for the following year. Years 7 to 10 were discontinued from 2008, with remaining Year 11 and 12 students staying on to complete their HSC. The school closed permanently at the end of 2009. What followed was nearly a decade of vacancy. A proposed replacement college, Lachlan Macquarie College, never eventuated after the University of Western Sydney confirmed in 2015 it would not take up the lease. The campus deteriorated through neglect, vandalism, and three separate arson fires. All structures were demolished between August and November 2018. This photograph was made in 2015, six years after closure. The corridor in the English Block records what was left: checkerboard tiles running its full length toward the music and drama rooms, broken windows along the right wall throwing hard rectangles of light across debris and broken glass, and a large grey graffiti tag covering most of the left wall. Not cleared so much as broken into, over and over, across nine years of vacancy.