The historic buildings at a former special needs school that was quickly shut down in 2015 leaving dozens of children with nowhere to go could be listed – raising questions about what the site may become in the future.

The former Penn School is currently going through the process of being listed by Historic England, a spokesman for the public body confirmed to the Bucks Free Press.

Listing a building gives it added protection from development – but this makes it harder for anyone to overhaul the site into something else.

The Church Road day and boarding school shut down within weeks of a shock announcement that it had suffered a “considerable drop in student numbers and income” in July 2015.

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Furious parents fought desperately to save the school – which catered for children aged between 11 and 18 with communication difficulties.

But administrators were called in to wind the school up – leaving staff without jobs and 74 students without a school place – and it was eventually sold to the government for more than £11 million a year later in 2016.

The government’s Education Funding Agency – now renamed the Education and Skills Funding Agency – had plans to create a new free school on the site, but the plans have so far not materialised.

The Department for Education has previously rejected three applications to develop a free school on the site.

The former school is also known as Rayners, a country house that was built by solicitor and businessman Sir Philip Rose, a friend of Prime Minister Benjamin Disraeli, in 1847.

Sir Philip died in 1883 and his son, also named Philip, inherited it. When he also passed away in 1919, the estate for sold for his 15-year-old son Humphrey.

It was bought by the London County Council for use as a school for deaf children.