Inside the Old School

22 March 2025

How do we remember the old school to LOOK ? For many of us, at least when we first arrived there, it seemed a fairly monstrous edifice. We had come from primary schools where the scale was much smaller, where there had been no such things as "labs", where a gymnasium might have been unheard of. Now, in our later years, when we look at the photos of the inside of the building, we seem to be struck about how small it was. Memory plays tricks in all sorts of ways.

Andy Brooks ('49-'56) -- who has been a wonderful help in answering all kinds of questions about the school --threw out a challenge: what do we remember about how the rooms, corridors, stairs, doors, and walkways were arranged ? The ground floor layout had been sketched out -- pretty roughly -- in the "School History" article. But could that diagram be improved, and what was the layout of the upper floor, never mentioned in the 'History' ? To answer this challenge, we went back to OS maps to get the external dimensions about right. That settled, we made what we think is a reasonable stab at how the rooms were arranged, and what special functions some of the rooms had. Below we see what we've come up with, but would love for anyone with better memories to suggest improvements ! Any special memories about any of the rooms ?