Chuckery Senior School 1904-1972
February 17, 2015 § 2 Comments
In memory of Bill Jeynes our metalwork teacher who died on 10th October 2016 aged 89. Thanks Bill, it was a pleasure knowing such a nice and talented bloke.
Another member of staff to have died in recent times was Michael Davies, Deputy Head during Miss Prentice’s reign. Mr. Davies died at his home in Codsall on Saturday 10th October 2015 aged 85. Michael had died exactly one year earlier to the day than his colleague Bill Jeynes.
Although Chuckery Primary School is still going strong Chuckery Senior School, opened in 1904, has long since gone, the site the school once occupied has been a housing estate for the last fourteen or fifteen years. In 1972 when Chuckery Senior School closed the premises were taken over by arch rivals, Blue Coat School and later the nomad of Walsall’s education system, the School of Art, took over the premises for several years. By 1999 plans were already under way to demolish and develop the site. In February 2000 I arrived at my old school with the intention of taking photographs of the doomed premises only to find it had virtually gone. The majority of the buildings had been demolished and a huge brick pile stood where the classroom used for domestic science (that’s what it was called in my day) stood. Speaking to one of the workmen he told me the bricks were destined for the crusher that made aggregate for road building etc, after hearing that I knew they had it in for the old place!
A view of the Senior school in 1950 from britainfromabove.org.uk website.
I wandered around the decimated site trying to photograph something…… anything would do! To make matters worse it was a typical winter day, cold, very overcast with appalling light; with the demolition almost complete this was no time to get artistic, click the bloody shutter and go! Maybe I should have got a bit artistic because when the film was developed many of the pictures were so under exposed you couldn’t see them, only a few were of sufficient quality to reproduce and two of them can be seen later in the post. « Read the rest of this entry »
Walsall Lives 2012
February 9, 2015 § Leave a comment
I cannot believe I allowed January to pass by without a new post being added, time seems to pass so quickly and already the first week of February has gone. There is an excuse, there always is! Way back in 2005 I published a book, A Complete Record of Walsall Races & The Hednesford Training Grounds and virtually from day one always regretted not registering it with ISBN. This has now been put right and the book will be republished with the appropriate registration number. It also gave me the opportunity to update various chapters of the book, in particular the World War Two races revival for the war effort and also the chapter on jockeys which is enlarged. That’s my excuse.
This post shows the penultimate Walsall Lives calendar for 2012. The two pictures I like from this edition is the one on the cover looking down Park Street towards The Bridge, the other is the one looking up Park Street to Her Majesty’s Theatre on page three after the map.
Walsall Life 