Huntingdon Brookside School

I remember the school in walden road and brookside and going to your grans mrs papworth in newtown. The path was called Grammar School walk. I think the teacher who taught arts and crafts was called Bill Branson. I got married in 1964 and moved from huntingdon in 1994. The town is nothing like it used to be which is a shame.

Thanks Dave you lived on the corner of Hartford Road and Primrose Lane I believe. I live in Peterborough now, but still have a lot of happy memories of Huntingdon. I would like to keep in touc.

Hello Dave Beeke how are you? I remember Walden Road school when I was a pupil in early sixties. Headmaster was Mr Beadle and one of the teachers was Miss Maddox(of Maddox and Kirby) the garage junction of High Street/Hartford Road. Can you remember the location of Hartford Place in Huntingdon at all?

I know Dave Beeke well. we were in the same (gang) at one time as kids do.
I also went to the CofE school at the age of five and went to the Secondary Modern at eleven, Nirth End was our stamping ground. Happy days. what a change now.
Wendy (Wilson) Dighton.

The school in Walden Road was originally the Girls' National School. It is now the WI Centre. I think the art classroom you are remembering was originally that of the Grammar School, which moved to Brampton Road shortly before the war and then expanded into Hinchingbrooke House opposite, eventually becoming Hinchingbrooke School when comprehensive education came in. The art classroom became the first building for the Huntingdonshire Record Office, which moved across Grammar School Walk into the old British School (former chapel) in 1974, then into new Huntingdon Library and Archives in 2009. The old record office and the other former GS buildings were knocked down after 1974 and Anglian Water offices erected. Meanwhile what you call 'Cromwell's School', sometimes called at the time 'the Norman Hall', the much restored relic of the St John's Hospital, became the Cromwell Museum, which it still is. I am always seeking pictures of the art or handicrafts room as I worked at the Record Office 1987-95 and am interested in its history. Bizarrely the Archives have no picture of it. Brookside School was built as successor to the British School that was below standard required for 1902. When first at Huntingdon I met a man in his 90s who remembered being led out of it and taken 'in a crocodile' down to the new Brookside School. It became county music centre for a while after St Peter's replaced it as a SM school, and was demolished c.2000 for housing.

My Father went to school there Anthony Breed he was born in 1941 his grandad William Breed was George Maddox chauffeur of Maddox and Kirby and my other great grandad Charles Blissett painted cars there