More on Walworth/Mina Road

John tells me:

When I came up from the Lower School in 1963 the old building was still in use. There were two halls and I remember the boys and girls in the third year being separated into them for sex education lessons. The RE teacher, Mr Tagg led for the boys , standing on the stage and asking the boys to send him confidential written notes regarding their queries about sex. As you can expect one boy's note was 'does masturbation make you blind?' Mr Tagg’s reply was confidently 'no' , but more hesitantly he admitted 'but it can make you out of breath'. He went on to state it was like 'running around the old school building at least three times'.

I can only remember two floors being in use. I don't remember whether there was a third floor. Most interestingly. during the winter the classrooms had open fires. The coke/ coal store was at the end of the building towards the Old Kent Road end. Often small bits of coke would be thrown around the playground. I think boys and girls had separate playgrounds, with the boys being adjacent to the old building and the girls being next to the remaining building. The upper school library was on the first floor of the old building. It was not very big and I think it was just a classroom made into a library. library periods were time tabled in year 3( 9), Sometimes school detentions were held in there. Brenda Harvey did much of her teaching in the old building and would be a good source of memories. However, I remember Reg Hunt saying that when the Old building was demolished they found a long length of railway track in the roof space, apparently , debris from the Blitz and bombing of Dunton Road railway yards in the second world war.