A year ago today, my friend Jamie shared the following post:
ABANDONED PROPERTY ADVENTURE: We explored the abandoned Sleighton Farm School, which was a reformatory school for girls in Glen Mills.
Originally the Philadelphia House of Refuge, founded in 1826–kind of a reform school. Children at the school, which was first coeducational, had lessons and worked the farm. Eventually this became a girls school.
The school has been closed since 2001 and the buildings are in disrepair. Many of these are old dorms, which they called “cottages”—a misnomer, because many of these buildings are large.
The cottages were designed by Cope and Stewardson (1885-1812), a Philadelphia architectural firm that created many major additions to college campuses, including the Quad at Penn and many buildings at Bryn Mawr College. (Oakwell connection: They were buddies with architect Frank Miles Day, architect of Oakwell structures, and collaborated with him when he designed the Penn Museum).
There is a chapel which was built in the 1960s. A few months ago, one of the cottages burned down in an arson.
Eventually, this property will be demolished. Its fate is up in the air. I fervently hope it doesn’t become something like “The Estates at Sleighton Farm School by [XYZ developer].”
So in a sense this is like a sister school to that horrible Glen Mills School. And I feel almost compelled to go down the rabbit hole of this Sleighton Farm School after looking at a couple of other oddly related things…..
The Pennsylvania Department of Human Services has reached a settlement agreement with the Clock Tower Schools, clearing the way for the entity to operate at the site of the former Glen Mills Schools….DHS has granted the Clock Tower Schools a provisional two-year license to operate its residential and day treatment programs. The state is also mandating the Clock Tower Schools pay for an independent monitor, Justice By Design.
Yes, I did a little segue here to the old Glenn Mills school now known as something like Clock Tower. But back to Sleighton. And another interesting segue.
Sleighton has a weird connection because of architects’ connection to another cool old house I recently discovered because of the people restoring it putting it on Instagram. It’s called (or was called) Binderton and it’s in Chestnut Hill.
Binderton was built between 1903 and 1906 by Cope & Stewardson Architects. Like Sleighton School. Now I know this is a total tangent, but this house in Chestnut Hill is so cool. It also posts gardens that were designed by the Olmsted Brothers, which in turn ties it also to Stoneleigh and Oakwell. Cool, right?
So yes …..Sleighton….in 2021 the place was being discussed in conjunction with a plan for like 193 townhouses. And remember the property is part Edgemont, part Middletown.
Recently an article about a novelist taking inspiration for her book from Glen Mills/Clock Tower and Sleighton seems to lead me to believe they haven’t started anything much at Sleighton yet?
Now this property seems to be originally about 300 acres? The Sleighton Farm property was originally given to Henry Sleighton by William Penn. So it was also a Penn Land Grant? Newspaper archives have tons of articles about Sleighton ranging from problems, fights, fairs, and astounding amounts of money they got from the county and state.
It’s kind of crazy how much money these institutions used to get right? On July 15, 1957, the Delaware County Daily Times reported that Sleighton was getting $765,000 and Glen Mills School got $770,000! Think of what that would equate to in today’s dollars, right?
In 1970 from the same paper in 1970 I found a notice of an auction of “surplus goods.”
They had fairs, plants sales, and more. In 1974 they had the now deceased Judge Lisa Richette as a speaker and advertised for a farmer.
Like a decade or so ago there was a website post about a “school fixer upper.”
A multi alarm fire at Sleighton according to the Delco Times in June, 2024:
An incendiary fire at the long abandoned Sleighton Farm School for Girls in the 400 block of Valley Road in Middletown and Edgmont townships kept county firefighters busy Sunday night into early Monday…Edgmont Township Fire Marshal Al Mancill said the first call came in at 10:14 p.m. from a neighbor on Forrest Lane who saw flames. Firefighters arrived and found a 100-year-old abandoned dorm on fire and called for additional assistance.
It eventually went to two or more alarms, he said….Nobody was injured in the blaze, which took 90 minutes to control….
There have been numerous large fires over the years at the property, which has been closed for over 20 years.
Elwyn, which now owns the property, has a security patrol, with those members and state police patrolling the property and often making arrests, Mancill said.
Ok that is interesting right? And there were other articles from another fire on the Sleighton property in 2102 which said it was possibly due to a lightening strike…as in a storm.
A public notice posted in Monday’s Daily Times has drawn a rebuttal from Middletown Township.
Middletown Township is disputing a public notice Elwyn of Pennsylvania and Delaware and Rocky Run Development LLC published saying that a tentative plan for a proposed planned residential development submitted to the township in September 2021 has been deemed approved…..
Back to June 2024. Pennsylvania State Police Investigators deemed the fire arson after an investigation. At that time anyone who knew anything was asked to contact Pennsylvania State Police Master Trooper John Stewart at 610-558-7085.
The Abandoned Online post has interesting history on the place. So however many acres are left is owned by Elwyn and they say that was a result of Elwyn merging with Sleighton:
The Sleighton Farm School began as the House of Refuge in Philadelphia in 1826. 1 4 It was founded by the Quakers, with assistance from the Pennsylvania Prison Society, on the basis that juvenile offenders should be treated differently than adults…Male offenders were moved to Glen Mills in Delaware County to the newly formed Glen Mills School in 1889, while the female offenders remained at the House of Refuge. 1
The House of Refuge sought land in the rural Delaware County countryside in 1906 in a shift of curriculum. 1 14 The reformatory school found the belief that students would be better served in a setting that emulated a large family, where the therapeutic power of growing things on a working farm would be better than keeping them in the inner-city hardscape……On April 17, 1931, the school split into two, one for boys and one for girls. The boys’ school kept the Glen Mills name while the girls’ school became known as the Sleighton Farm School for Girls. 1 4 12 By 1949, Sleighton had grown to 350 acres, housing 350 to 360 females. 4…..In 1993, the Pennsylvania Agricultural Land Preservation Board purchased the easement to 120 acres owned by Sleighton for $1.62 million. 5 The easement purchase program, introduced in 1989, was designed to protect prime farmland from being developed by selling development rights to the state.
Sleighton merged with Elwyn in February 1998.
And there’s a lot more in that post so people should read it. It’s very interesting. But it’s very convoluted and confusing as to what is actually going on there. The only thing I seem to be able to find is that there is security on the site and I guess walking trails aren’t really open to the public?
I found something on social media from this year. That includes photos from I guess some kind of a firefighter who was on site for some kind of training exercise.
So what happens now? Who knows? Time will tell. As of June 4th unless I am reading this wrong the Justia site says “AND NOW, this 4th day of June, 2025,Elwyn of Pennsylvania and Delaware d/b/a Elwyn and Rocky Run Development, LLC’s appeal is quashed.”
So it seems there is an actual park area that is public, and where the buildings are rotting is private? But I am not sure? I am not going there, but it is an urban explorer favorite apparently, and again, who knows what happens now?
