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 »
Whitehall Infant & Junior Schools – and ex-pupil’s memories
November 12, 2014 § Leave a comment
Some time ago wyrleyblog produced an excellent early history of my old school, Whitehall Infants and Juniors in West Bromwich Road, Caldmore. The post is in two parts, the first part concerns the founding in 1899 followed by the Sarah Jane Parker story from 1899-1923. To read these two posts click on the links below:-
http://wyrleyblog.wordpress.com/walsall/whitehall-infant-school-part-1-founding-1899/
This the earliest picture I have for Whitehall Schools. Although not dated it surely must fit the time frame of wyrleyblog’s post perfectly.
I have recently been contacted by old pupil Clive Thatcher who lived in Redhouse Street and later Talke Road and attended Whitehall the same time as myself. He has very kindly sent me copies of three photographs of life at Whitehall some sixty plus years ago, these are shown along with pupil’s names at the very end of the post. Two of these three pictures were originally posted on the now defunct website, Friends Reunited.
The Old Blues Association
June 4, 2014 § Leave a comment
Details of the inaugural dinner in 1926.
This seems rather a strange post for an ex Chuckery School lad to be writing and about something as specific as The Old Blues Association. Some years ago I purchased a considerable number of items concerning this very association. Included in the many documents were two albums, one was dated from 1926 to 1939 and the other from 1951 to 1973. Both contained details of the annual dinners organised by the Blue Coat School Old Boys & Girls Association. The earlier one was concerned with just The Old Boys Association but the later one was for both Old Boys and Old Girls Association. Each year an artistic pupil was selected to illustrate a title page, the following pages contained the signatures of all those who attended the event. The artwork, in many cases, is of a high standard making both albums very appealing historical documents. They are currently housed at Walsall Local History Centre and are available for public viewing; Accession 1205, The Old Blues Association dinner guest books, 1926-1973. « Read the rest of this entry »
Walsall Life 