Next month we celebrate the 50th anniversary of the “new” school in Quarry Lane. So in this months review from the archives I’ve included a number of random examples of pictures taken on school visits, as well as one or two images from school plays and successful competition entries. Many of these older pictures were taken before the digital age as colour slides, so I have had a number of them converted to be able to show them. This is just a random selection from the latest batch.

Performing Joseph and the Amazing Technicolour Dreamcoat was always a favourite, from the time when the Christleton Primary school choir combined with Waverton School choir to perform at the Gateway, with the professional company. Following that experience we performed the work at least three times at School. In fact one of my last acts on stage in the school, was to be Jacob in the 1997 production of Joseph. Several of the Gateway cast from 1997 remained friends with the school for many years, such was the impact the children had on the performance at the Gateway. I found a picture taken in the entrance hall of the Pottery Display from the Festival of Dragons we staged in the Festival of British Villages in 1977. There are two lovely images of the Fun Run with the Mr Man, an event sponsored by The Trooper (Beefeater Inns) which used to start from the Primary School field.

School Visits were also favourite activities of all the children, and the ones illustrated are at Burwardwardsley and Foxhowl (Delamere Forest) Centres. The children were on daily visits (Infants) or as many as five days for Junior classes. We also built up a tradition of five day visits to the Lake District for Year 6 children in their final term, and these were based at Keswick YHA for four nights, with the fifth day being spent further north on Hadrians Wall, making visits to the Roman Army Museum at Carorvan, and the fortress and small town of Vindolanda. From Keswick it was possible to take a boat along Lake Derwentwater and then walk along the fells, to Ashness Bridge, Watendlath, Manesty, or Cat Bells and the Newlands Valley, and occasionally Skiddaw. We also visited Grasmere and The National Park Centre at Brockhole near Ambleside. Other visits illustrated were a fossil hunt at Llangollen, and to Conway Castle, Anglesey and the Sea Zoo along the Menai Straits, staying at Bangor YHA. You can tell how long ago that was, as it was prior to the Conway tunnel being opened!

The last sequence was a Civil war Competition run by the Sealed Knot Society who were promoting an Civil war re enactment on the Meadows in Chester. I featured the Maypole Team there a month or so ago. Here the children painted and wrote about the Battle of Rowton Moor and were invited to see the display of their work a St Mary’s Centre, together with Andrew Gillitt and members of the Sealed Knot dressed in their wonderful uniforms of the period. I think it was a great surprise to them that Christleton Primary won all the prizes on offer for Junior Children. St Mary’s Centre is still an amazing facility for concerts and exhibitions in the city. The Civil War Tombs are some of the finest in England, and the one illustrated in the background of the picture of the children working with actors of the Gamul Family is the finest.