Memory Bank

Old Photos Travel Far and Wide

Old whole school photos have been winging their way around the globe over the last few weeks, since we made available spare copies from the archive.

The most popular destination for them has been Hong Kong, followed by the USA and most recently Australia.

Stephen Sturley, now based in New York, was delighted with his photo from 1969-70, which brought back happy memories.

"It was a lot of fun, I had three cousins (Chris and Andy Bean and Peter Palmer) at the school then, so that was very nostalgic as well as remembering old faces of friends.  The power of the human mind is amazing; to not have thought of somebody in 40 years or so and then instantly to be able to recall them!"

We still have some copies available for purchase at £20 unframed plus postage and packing. A few photos are framed, these will cost £30, and are available for collection only. If any OPs are interested in purchasing them please email Melanie Butler for more details. 

Digging Up Old Memories

The recent photo of Peter Rex and the Archeological Club circa 1972 excavating the kitchen midden, dug up some old memories for OP Charles Lawton.

He recalls, "I am in this picture against the tree head hidden on the right. I remember the dig well and we found all sorts of things dating from the days of St Mary's Priory."

He continues, "The midden was on the edge of the woods, behind the gas works. You enter the wooded section of the mile walk, turn sharp left in to the wood and from memory it is just about 5-yards in adjacent to the boundary hedge of the woods.

"The names from the left are Jim Burke squatting facing the camera, standing bending over away from the camera, unknown, squatting in the foreground, Simon Powell, squatting in the background facing camera , unknown, with glasses facing camera Richard Starkey, then me, chap on extreme left I know the face but cannot remember the name."

If you can fill in any of the missing names from the photo, please let us know.

Archive Update - Cataloguing Progress

The College's Archive Project is progressing with pdfs of the catalogues now available. They provide a fascinating insight into the history of the College including key documents such as the deeds, the admissions registers and Year Books, plus information on the Benedictine period, St Mary's Priory and St Bede's.

Comments Librarian, Celia Scott, "What we have currently is a snapshot of the materials we have catalogued up to the middle of May. This gives a flavour of what we have in the archive.

"By its very nature the archive is constantly changing as things are added to it. The next stage will be to digitalise materials with the hope of making the live Past Perfect database available to OPs in the future, so they can search and see the materials we hold in the Archive for themselves."

To take a look click on the links below to the pdfs.