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The old building and the move to Remembrance Avenue (4th and final chapter)

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This is the final part of the story of the move of the School to the current site in Remembrance Avenue.  The Bordenian of March 1929 has this offering.

“On entering the New School”

At last, after waiting for fifty long years,
A marvellous vision to us now appears;
A spacious new school, done in brick, red and white,
Our jubilant hearts give a leap at the sight.
The great day has come, like the sun through the clouds,
The school to a man in the Dining Hall crowds;
“Let’s feast to the Gov’nors, who’ve turned up some trumps,
And bring us to bliss from our present old dumps.
Come turn out your linings and purchase good wine,
Then solemnly join hands and sing ‘Auld Lang Syne’ “
So heedless of rain and with arms full of books,
Past wurtzel and bungalows, sling we our hooks;
All eyes fixed ahead on the splendid new place,
Sporting a silk flag, all bordered with lace.
“Some brand new idea,” we all nod to ourselves,
And forward we trip like a concourse of elves;
Softly we glide, whispering praise,
Submitting each room to our wondering gaze.

Yet, ‘mid all these splendours, who feels not regret,
For the Borden of memories, dear to us yet?            A.W.S.

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The old building and the move to Remembrance Avenue (Pt 3)

The story continues from last month - http://www.oldbordenians.co.uk/?p=146#more-146 for those who hadn’t spotted it was further down the home page! I appreciate that some of the photos are duplicated from the earlier posts, but this part of the story is more a pictorial representation of the old school then and now.

The next photographs show the old school at different times and a little detective work will enable the reader to put them into chronological order. I have tried to take contemporary photographs but much of the school field has been built on to provide private housing taking up the whole corner of the plot bounded by the original road up to the school, Riddles Road and College Road. Hence I was unable to get wide views.

At the time of writing, I have not been able to identify any of the internal rooms mentioned in “Vale”.  I am finding that the more I write, the more there is to investigate. I do not think of time as the enemy but it certainly seems to ‘fugit’ very rapidly! BGS 1914

 The photo above shows the cricket square in good condition but I think the outfield would have caused a bit of a problem!

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The old building and the move to Remembrance Avenue (Pt 2)

This is the 2nd article detailing the history of the school and particularly around the period 1928 - 1929, when the school moved to its current location.  It is a while since the first was published so to refresh memories - http://www.oldbordenians.co.uk/?p=88#more-88.  The story continues ..

I wondered where the photograph shown below was taken.  The text in the previous article seems to infer that this was the dining hall with the ancestral arms mounted on the wall at the end of the room.  I remember them mounted on the wall in the old hall between the Honours Boards. A recent search in Archives produced only the banner. 

 

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1,000+ Years of Old Bordenian Veteran Footballers!

The Summer monsoon kindly stopped just before the kick-off and another in a series of  ‘last’ reunion matches of the OBA Veteran footballers took place on the ‘lower’ field at the School on Sunday 07 September 2008. The sun actually put in an appearance at half-time. It was indeed a real pleasure to play again on the lower field - the scene of so many memorable OBA matches in the 1970′ and 1980’s. Fortunately, the width of the pitch has been reduced to accommodate the new school buildings but the slope remains a formidable challenge especially to older limbs and lungs.