Liverpool city region’s top private school, Merchant Taylors’, puts part of its historic site up for redevelopment and instructs CBRE to find a buyer. Tony McDonough reports

Prestigious private school Merchant Taylors’ is seeking a buyer for 3.32-acres of its site in Crosby.

Merchant Taylors’ is Liverpool city region’s best known fee-paying school and dates back more than 400 years to 1620. The school is merging its boys’ and girls’ divisions to form a co-educational campus.

This means the former girls’ school buildings, tennis courts, car park and landscaped areas, are surplus to requirements. They were previously under offer to a special educational needs (SEN) school operator who recently withdrew from the sale.

Now agents at CBRE have been tasked with finding a buyer for the site. Located in Crosby within Sefton and six miles north of Liverpool, it sits in one of the city region’s most affluent suburbs.

Depending on planning constraints it would prove valuable to a residential developer. Kieran McLaughlin, senior director at CBRE said: “This is a development opportunity in a highly sought after location in Crosby, with an array of excellent leisure and cultural amenity close by.

“It has potential for a range of alternative uses, subject to planning. It is also within close walking distance of some of Liverpool’s best performing primary and secondary schools, including the new co-educational Merchant Taylors’ School.”

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The site is well connected, bound to the east by the A565 with onward access to Liverpool city centre. To the north and south of the site are predominantly low rise residential and educational uses. Blundellsands & Crosby Merseyrail station is close by.

Merchant Taylors’ includes a Grade II listed, two-storey building which currently houses the school library and extends to around 3,600 sq ft.