The King’s School’s new £60 million campus is creating a sporting wonderland not only for its pupils, but for the wider community.
As work nears completion on the sheltered woodland site on Alderley Road, the prospect of having one of Cheshire’s sporting jewels on Macclesfield’s doorstep draws ever closer.
Located adjacent to the Derby Playing Fields, which already has its own superb pavilion and eight professionally kept rugby pitches, where Macclesfield Town FC train, will be a breathtakingly bold new complex with superb indoor and outdoor facilities.
Inside the new Sports Centre will be a 25 metre, 6 lane swimming pool, a massive new sports hall with floor markings for six badminton courts and a netball court as well as space for umpteen trampolines. Plus there is a separate hall for Cheshire’s only dedicated indoor cricket facility, offering a three-lane netted area that will be used throughout the year by school and club cricketers. Upstairs there will be a fitness gymnasium with the latest weight stations and cross trainers, plus a studio for dance, martial arts and yoga.
Outside there will be two all-weather floodlit sports surfaces ideal for hockey and football, plus six floodlit netball courts which double up as tennis courts.
The list goes on: there will be five grass junior football pitches, a 400-metre athletics track with stations for the field events, plus a purpose-built rounders pitch.
King’s has already produced an England rugby union captain in Steve Smith, an England cricket coach in Peter Moores and an Olympic gymnast in Jennifer Pinches and it is hoped the new facilities will enable many more current and future sports stars to realise their potential.
Already a number of sports clubs and community groups from Macclesfield and beyond use King’s facilities and it is anticipated many more will be able to utilise all the new campus has to offer. Chris Thomson, King’s Director of Sport, said: “King’s has always enjoyed a national reputation for sporting excellence. On any given weekend we can have upwards of 400 young men and women competing in a variety of team and individual sports in A, B and even C teams in certain age groups, and the new facilities will enhance our scope even further.”
“It will mean we can arrange more sports for more youngsters and develop specific training and practice programmes for our elite athletes, whilst encouraging all ability levels to develop a passion for competitive sport and a healthy lifestyle.”
Steve Moores, Head of Cricket and Hockey and Commercial Lettings Manager, said: “Outside of the normal school timetable, clearly there is scope to provide the community with some fabulous opportunities and access to some facilities that the locality simply doesn’t have at the moment, including the new all-weather surfaces, the pool and the indoor cricket centre.”