Pay attention and sit up straight – especially you at the back.
Former pupils of a Norwich school have been given some homework – to dig out memorabilia to place in a permanent public archive.
The plea comes from a now defunct Old Boys Union at the City of Norwich School (CNS) which wound up with a final lunch in 2022.
Boxes of archives and artefacts dating back to its 1910 founding are now being catalogued ready to be passed to the Norfolk Record Office (NRO).
But now organisers have put out a rallying call for other material before an end of March deadline.
The two-fold plea is for photographs, documents, reports and records from the CNSOBU, and also from the “Class of 61,” who were at the Eaton Road school from 1956-61 and may or may not have been part of the OBU.
Ex-pupil Adrian O’dell, who was part of that class, said: “We have had six boxes of material from the OBU including a staff register from 1910, showing teachers who were born in the 1880s, which is quite an historic document, and some original school caps which were red not blue.”
The staff register includes science teacher Samuel Hewitt, born in 1867, who taught at the school from 1893 to 1930, whose annual salary in 1904 was £150.
Adrian added: “Our archivist Gerry Aldus is currently cataloguing them into categories such as newsletters, meeting minutes, and photos, including sports teams. But before we pass them on to the NRO, so people can access them, we would like to appeal for any more material that may be lurking in ex pupils’ attics and cupboards.
“We need anything from anybody who was in the OBU of the ‘Class of 61’ - but documents or digital material rather than artefacts which are harder to store,” said Adrian, from North Tuddenham near Dereham.
“We hope it will provide a valuable community archive – except our community is a school not a village.”
The CNS was originally a boys’ state grammar school, admitting girls for the first time in the 1970s, and going comprehensive 54 years ago when the CNSOBU had 250 members, before dwindling and leading to its winding up in 2022.
The remnants of an £8,000 kitty were given to the schools’ music department.
Anyone with material for the archive should contact Adrian O’dell at adrianodellwth@gmail.com or call 07902 280087.
*With thanks to Richard Batson.
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