Saturday 13th January 2013 Last Look Round

A group of 1957 students from the first intake of the Shrewsbury Technical High School visited The Wakeman on Saturday 13th January 2013 for a last look round. The school is due to close in July 2013.

Rosemary Hemming wrote “We enjoyed the trip round [the school]. I felt obviously the main structure of the school had not altered much. The old classrooms were there. A gym block had been built on but but we only saw the entrance.”

John Giddins, who was meeting members of the group for the first time in nearly 50 years, said : “Well it was certainly an interesting day on Saturday and I managed to get to talk for a while to a few people as there were probably around 15 of us there. The history teacher at the Wakeman who made it possible had hired a few others to follow us around with several video cameras to add footage to his School History project. It was interesting having so many there as one would suddenly recall something and then that set the brains of others in motion and things tended to snowball then.
The history teacher finally showed us an old film which he thought might be our year on a trip to Belgium and the Netherlands, but it turned out to be another year.
The balcony has now been turned into an impressive audio-visual suite – pity it’s all going to waste in 6 months time. The amazing thing about meeting old friends for the first time in almost 50 years is that after a brief reintroduction you carry on as though the past 40-50 years had not existed!! We spent about two hours walking around.”

Rosemary added : “There was talk amongst the staff, that showed us round, that they are hoping to have a couple of times when the building will be open to anyone. There is also to be a closing Church Service in the Abbey in July.”