A vet who captained the 1943-44 rugby team left King's his estate. The £5m pavilion it paid for opened this month, with 20-plus local clubs on the pitches.

The King’s School has opened a £5m sports pavilion paid for entirely by a former pupil who left the school his estate when he died.

Roy Forster captained the school’s rugby team in 1943-44. He became a vet in Sussex, and he and his wife Jean left everything they had, land and property included, to King’s. The two-storey building that money has bought is named the Forster Pavilion.

The school announced the opening on 10 September. The campus is on Alderley Road, Prestbury, about two miles north-west of Macclesfield town centre.

What has been built

The pavilion stands at the centre of the school’s hockey, netball and junior football pitches, on the site of the old changing rooms next to the two Astro pitches. Construction started at Easter and finished for the start of this academic year.

The school’s description of the building sets out what is inside.

Upstairs:

  • a 250 square metre open-plan hospitality suite
  • a wraparound viewing balcony over both artificial pitches
  • full audio-visual kit for conference-style presentations
  • two smaller meeting rooms
  • a kitchen and catering provision intended for dinners and similar events

Downstairs:

  • two large and two smaller changing spaces, enough for 200 pupils to change and shower
  • five smaller changing rooms for match officials and staff

The building has a lift and accessible changing throughout. The roof carries a full array of solar panels, adding to those already on the academic building and the sports centre.

The Forster Pavilion in numbers: £5m, a 250 square metre suite, room for 200 pupils to change, 20-plus grassroots clubs

Who gets to use it

This matters beyond the school gates. King’s says more than 20 grassroots sports clubs and local primary schools already use its facilities in the evenings and at weekends, alongside its own 1,300-odd pupils.

Regular users of the Astro pitches include Macclesfield and Alderley Edge Hockey Club and Alderley United FC, according to the school’s announcement. The school says the hospitality space will also be offered for conferences and community events.

Chris Thomson, the school’s director of sport, said the building had already been used for Games lessons, the first parents’ coffee morning of the year and a touring hockey team from Argentina.

“The pavilion has been enabled by the foresight and generous offering of a former pupil,” he said. “Roy Forster developed a lifelong interest in sport when he was a pupil at King’s, and his donation has allowed us to create an outstanding sports facility for our pupils and families, and beyond that even, to our wider community partners.”

Who was Roy Forster

Forster was born in 1927 at Scholar Green, the only child of a garage owner, and travelled in to King’s Junior School by train from 1934.

He played for the first XI at cricket. In rugby he was a full back, and he captained the 1943-44 side. The school magazine of 1944 recorded him as “one of the best full backs the school has produced”, adding: “Safe tackler, strong and accurate kicker, much cooler under pressure than last year, and joins the attack with discretion and good effect. A good and popular captain.”

He left school in 1944 and trained as a vet at Liverpool University. In 1953 he took over a practice in Eastbourne. He sat on the RSPCA’s governing body and council, chaired it for three years, and was invited to a Buckingham Palace garden party for that work.

Forster retired to Upper Dicker in East Sussex with Jean, their dachshunds and their ponies. He died at home in October 2009, aged 82. Jean died in August 2021. Their estate went to the school, which calls him one of its greatest benefactors.

The 525-year point

The school is treating the opening as the start of its 525-year anniversary celebrations.

King’s dates its foundation to 1502, when a chantry school was set up in the Savage Chapel of Macclesfield Parish Church under the will of Sir John Percyvale, a Macclesfield boy who became Lord Mayor of London. On that reckoning the 525th year falls in 2027. The school was refounded in 1552 as the free Grammar School of King Edward VI after the chantries were dissolved, and it records the near miss in its own history.

What it means for you

King’s is an independent school and a registered charity, number 1137204. Almost none of this is public money: the pavilion came from a bequest, and the pitches are the school’s own.

The practical effect for residents is the pitch and hall capacity that comes with it.

  • If you play for a local club that already hires the Astro pitches, there are now proper changing rooms and showers for up to 200 people, plus separate rooms for officials.
  • If you run a club or a primary school looking for a venue, the school advertises its facilities for hire.
  • If you are looking for somewhere to watch a hockey or netball fixture, the first-floor balcony overlooks both artificial pitches.

More places to play and watch sport locally are on our things to do in Macclesfield page.

Sources