A Very Special Event
ST JAMES' SCHOOL, SUTTON on HULL
150th ANNIVERSARY GRAND REUNION !
4th July 2009
And a Grand Day Out it was too !
The whole event was a tremendous success, and a credit to all who organised
and helped out. A memorable day indeed for all those who attended,
many of who travelled quite some distance to be here.
And wasn't the weather was kind to us ... albeit a little warm !
It was a joy to see so many old friends, separated by the passage of the years or great distances, greeting each other with hugs and handshakes and copious amounts of laughter. A familiar sight was to see people approaching others and peering closely to read each other's name labels as they attempted to recall faces from half a century ago and put them to the faces of today. It made for some quite amusing exchanges. Followed by the half-remembered memories, stories of old tricks and nicknames, updates on how several decades of life had treated one and all, the place fairly buzzed with bonhomie. Around 100 attended all told, and some 43 of those for the dubious experience of a restored School Dinner. Joking apart, I'm told it was very enjoyable, delicious, and all the better for the benefit of good company and an excellent floor show.
The children of St James' School on Dorchester Road entertained the veteran pupils of the old St James' at their re-union dinner in the Church Hall. They sang a selection of songs from OLIVER, including 'Food, Glorious Food', with great gusto, to the aroma of cottage pie and 3-veg.
A luverly performance indeed !
A huge thanks to all the 17 children, in the photo above, who were assisted by
members of the school staff, Jane Daniels, Margaret Thornton and Joanne Carr.
Ex-pupils later browse the many and varied old school records in the Old School itself during their Re-union gathering.
All the Attendants & Helpers that made the event such a success
And also thanks to Stuart Russell of the publication 'Flashback',
whose untiring efforts in publicising the event was largely instrumental
in it being the stomping success it was.
[ photo: Liz Cooke ]
And last, but not least, the bubbling, buoyant, ebullient, enthusiastic and
completely unstoppable Merrill .... what more can we say. Thank you Merrill.
( a resumé of her speech of welcome is produced below )
More and more details will be posted here in the next few days. It can't be done
all at once, so there will be rolling updates as new information comes in.
For instance:
The Raffle raised £85.50 towards Resource Centre funds.
For those who came to the Re-union, did you enjoy it ... ?
We have a Guestbook, if you'd like to comment .. ..
To date (8-7-09] five ex-pupils have signed in to the guestbook.
It seemed appropriate to me to have a few lines here:
No Time Like the Old Time
by Oliver Wendell Homes
There is no time like the old time,
when you and I were young,
When the buds of April blossomed,
and the birds of spring-time sung!
The gardens brightest glories
by summer suns are nursed,
But oh, the sweet, sweet violets,
the flowers that opened first!
There is no friend like the old friend,
who has shared our morning days,
No greeting like his welcome,
no homage like his praise:
Fame is the scentless sunflower,
with gaudy crown of gold;
But friendship is the breathing rose,
with sweets in every fold.
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You Can  Us
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this new page went live at 22.53 on the Sunday night
following the re-union; 5th July 2009.
Merrill welcomed everyone to the 150th birthday of the Old School, mentioning that the opening date preceded even the railway coming to Sutton just 5 years later! She told of the efforts of the present St James' School, Year 6, who had been in to the museum on Thursday, to talk about their project and mount up their writing and pictures, and also the second group, Years 3/4, who gave such a thrilling performance of a selection of numbers from their current stage show, 'Oliver'.
All former pupils were thanked roundly for attending the Reunion and making it such an astounding success. Far more turned up than were first expected, including children and grandchildren of former pupils. Noteworthy were Eric Johnson's daughter, and John Topham's grandson, from Walsall. This was one of the first families to 'begin' this 'museum of village life' with gifts of First World War medals, and other artefacts from the 1900s.
Merrill went on to mention George Arthur Coleman, the vicar of the same time, who left us the legacy of the glass plate photographs, and about having the school log books, registers and photographs. Former pupils were also thanked for returning their questionnaires about their time at the school - to provide a future archive. The great distance travelled to the Reunion by at least two former pupils was mentioned; one had come all the way from Angus, and another, Gladys Earle, from the Isle of Arran.
The 20 excellent volunteers were given their due, as well as Bernard who cooked a truly memorable school dinner. Extra volunteers from the church also came in and ably assisted the general effort. Not only were the attendants ready with tea, coffee, biscuits, cold drinks, but several had baked cakes, with even a super celebration cake that had a picture of the Old School on top. We all hope everyone will have enjoyed their time on Saturday afternoon, and met up with lots of former - and new - friends.
In church the following morning, the the vicar read out the following:
Very many thanks to everyone who worked so hard to make the Old School Reunion yesterday such an exciting and lively event. Everyone enjoyed the school dinner, the singing of St James' School, and the get-together afterwards. A big Thank You to all of you who helped in any way. £182 was raised for the museum, of which £85.50 was raised by the raffle. And a good bit of that was collected by Ashleigh!
Dinner and cabaret over, a raging thirst took hold, and so 50 people bore down on the school with a right royal thirst. We're all thrilled with the general turnout and the atmosphere, not to mention being blessed with a beautiful, sunny afternoon.
Attendées of the School Dinner
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Attendées of the School Dinner & Reunion
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[ some browsers may be able to make these images larger ]
sorry for the poor quality; may be able to get a proper list up yet.
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there's more photos to come . ..
In the meantime, I've become aware of how difficult it is for some folks looking up their old school pals on "FriendsRe-United".
The secret is to enter "St James' CofE Primary School" in the search bar, and then the usual boxes for county, region, etc, which brings up the school at its 'new' site on Dorchester Road. This is correct, you have the right one. For within, you'll find the years going back to before the school moved from Sutton village. Thus it will probably default at the years 1954-59 ... you can move back or forth in 5yr blocks.
The earliest results I saw were for Geoffrey Frost and Norman Brown for 1934, the year they left.
This Link May Work
[ photo: Alan Thurloe ]
The magnificent 150th Birthday Cake
The Hall being set for one more School Dinner .... note the Helpers are just a blurr
they were moving around that fast !
....................... Dinner is cooked . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . and served, still in a blurr ...........
The view from the stage as the former dinner ladies would have seen it,
after scaring the mice away so they could serve up.
And look ..... the staff are blurring again ! Run off their feet, they were.
[ photo: Liz Cooke ]
After the dinner, our veteran diners enjoy the floor show.
The show was filmed for posterity .....
Years 3 & 4 giving their superb performance of numbers from OLIVER, extolling the virtues of hot sausage and mustard,
cold jelly and custard, followed by copious quantities of indigestion!
Then it was time for a cuppa!
[ photo: Liz Cooke ]
So, it's repair to the embrace of more old friends and a cup o' char in the Old School.
And biscuits and cakes galore.
[ both photos: Alan Thurloe ]
There were saucy reminisces . . . and even Audrey, our oldest Attendant, enjoyed herself
[ photo: Liz Cooke ]
And after a good chat and a bun, it's into enjoying and mixing with the records
[ photo: Liz Cooke ]
Viewing some of the history compiled by St Jame's C of E School on Dorchester Road.
The place has never been so packed
[ photo: Alan Thurloe ]
Teas were served . . ..
Then there was the washing up . . ..
. . . . and the messing about.
.... and more messing about.
Oh Aye !? And what's in that Coke bottle, then .... ?
[ photo: Liz Cooke ]
Finally, there was this lady ......
I couldn't get her to stand still long enough to get her into focus.
She's at full speed here .... Does anyone know her . . . ?
Lack of webspace and large filesizes forbid showing the photos
in a format good enough to print, but if anyone would like
a full-sized photo emailing to them, I'd be happy to do so.
Do remember that they can be anything from half a megabyte,
or around 600kb, up to two Megabytes each, 2Mb.
You would really need to be on broadband,
or they will take a very long while to download.
RETURN TO THE OLD SCHOOL PAGE
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