Site will keep alive old high memories

Julie Gilbert • Published 16 Sep 2009 12:00

Former pupil's project will be a virtual reminder

With the former Clydebank High School building razed to the ground, and this term's pupils already settling into the new building, it would be easy to forget about the old place.

But Robert Jennings, 25, is determined it will not be lost to history and has set up a website dedicated to all things Clydebank High.

He is appealing to other former pupils to contribute their photographs and stories to the site and hopes to build a history going right back to its beginnings at the end of the 19th Century.

Although the building which has just been demolished was built in the 1940s it had links to Clydebank School which once stood on Kilbowie Road.

Robert told the Post: "I was able to get inside the school a few days before they pulled it down to take pictures.

"I'm hoping to set up a virtual tour so that former pupils can have a look around inside.

"There are so many memories that will be lost.

"In the old school there were wooden boards with the names of all the head boys and head girls going back to the end of the Nineteenth Century.

"I believe that they have not been moved to the new school but are being recreated in some modern way.

"That's the sort of thing I wanted to get a picture of because it's a little bit of history that will just be lost.

"The original staircases are all made of stone and they had been worn away by pupils' boot treads over the years.

"It's nice to think of the generations that have gone before and walked down those stairs. I wanted to take pictures of these things because once they are gone you can't get them back."

Robert used to live in Radnor Park directly across from the school, and his mum still lives there.

He and friend Jim Dempster were inspired to set up the site when they felt a pang of sadness at seeing it being pulled down before their eyes.

As both have had several generations of their families pass through the school, they have access to a lot of archive material.

Robert said: "Most of the old stuff we have got is from the 1940s and 1950s.

"Jim's father was a pupil in the early 1950s and his year was one of the first in the second building.

"What a lot of people don't know is that the second building was supposed to open in the early 1940s but the Second World War got in the way.

"The building that has just been knocked down got damaged by a parachute bomb and I heard that the school was used as a temporary morgue.

"Pupils didn't move in until 1947.

"We also have a couple of books with Clydebank High in them going right back to the early days in the Nineteenth Century."

The site address is www.oldchs.co.uk and anyone wanting to contribute photographs or memories can click on the contact us tab.

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This article appeared in Clydebank Post 16 Sep 09

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