Woodham, Comprehensive (1984-2024)

They're tearing down my old school.

Last July there were lots of posts on Facebook, inviting former staff and pupils to take one last look. They were even organising guided tours.

I was a pupil at Woodham Comprehensive for 7 years, from Autumn 1984 to Summer 1991. I took all of my 'important' exams there.

I really didn't know if I should go back. 

I didn't have many happy memories but the place had been a huge part of my childhood. 


I'd really enjoyed my time at Primary School. In particular, my final year at Woodham Burn Juniors was great. 

Mr Morley (my teacher) and Mr Robson (the Headmaster) both resembled characters from The Wind In The Willows. They were jovial and welcoming like Ratty or Toad but also had the ability to be stern and authoritative like Badger. It was probably the last time I felt safe at school. There was a warm, almost familial atmosphere - at least that's how I like to remember it.

But then, we were told it was time to go to Big School. Instead of the eight classrooms and 220 kids at Woodham Burn, we'd be going to Woodham Comprehensive. The Comp was a huge, sprawling set of buildings filled with almost a thousand pupils.  


School was suddenly larger, noisier and greyer. The corridors were much longer and much, much gloomier. It felt like the whole place was starved of daylight and colour. Starting at a new school on the first damp days of Autumn seemed to set the tone.

Uniform hadn't been compulsory in Primary School but at Big School everybody - even the staff - seemed to be dressed in black, charcoal or very dark green.

Instead of one teacher we had ten or twelve names and faces to remember and there were so many new, different subjects. We even had to change classrooms between each lesson. Chemistry in D2. French in H7. Woodwork in C6.


There was a constant, faint smell of singed paper and the linoleum floors felt soft and squashy underfoot. Was the whole place sinking?

Staff would stand in doorways, barking at us as we moved between lessons. We'd be told to "hurry up!", "stay on the right!", "tuck that shirt in!" and "stop talking!!!"

Why was everything so much crappier at Big School? And why did every teacher seem to be angry all the time? It was like leaving the idyllic river bank of Ratty and Mole and staggering into a Toad Hall overrun by arsey weasels.


In that first year, we didn't just have to get used to a whole new school, new subjects and a new bunch of teachers - they also threw in our BCG injections. 

In order to protect us all from tuberculosis, we were lined up and jabbed with large, scary needles. In the following weeks we'd all suffer with numb arms, leaking yellow pus and large, soggy scabs. It was just too tempting to scratch and pick at the site of those injections - so they took a lot longer to heal. 

This was also back in the days when teachers were allowed to hit pupils. Board erasers would often fly through the air and really naughty kids were sent to the Deputy Head to be caned. In the first year we had a Maths Teacher who'd quite happily punch you on the arm if he thought you weren't paying attention. And guess what? He'd always aim for those BCG scabs.


It was difficult for me to find a safe place at school. I must have been like a Mole, squinting at the strange outside world as I emerged each day.

As first years we were so much smaller than everybody else. We shared dining halls, staircases and school yards with kids as old as 17 and 18. They were all so tall and spotty and long-haired. How could I be expected to share a school with people who were old enough to shave or drive or get married?

I found myself walking around the perimeter of the school every break and lunch time. I thought if I kept moving then I couldn't be singled out for name calling or a good thumping. 

Quite often there'd be fights on the school fields. Kids would gather around as shirts were ripped and ties were yanked. Shouts of "Fight! Fight! Fight!" or "Grapple!" would draw in the crowds. Any Teachers on yard duty would always walk incredibly slowly towards the scene of a fight... Presumably hoping that it'd all be over before they got there.


 In truth, I was always most frightened of P.E. lessons. I was a tubby kid and the teachers weren't exactly encouraging or supportive. They'd 'motivate' me to do better by calling me "useless" or "a lump". Anybody who wasn't prepared to risk life and limb on the rugby field was called a "fairy" or a "bender".

And of course, a lot of the kids would join in. After all, if the teachers were calling people names then it must be OK, right? Twats. 

Most of the time I just tried not to get my P.E. kit dirty. My Mam would yell at me if I went home covered in mud after cross country or football.


Things were even worse because my brother had gone through the school a few years before me. He'd been a straight 'A' student so a lot of my new teachers wanted to know why I wasn't as smart. They would use his achievements as a stick to beat me with (not literally, some of them had actual sticks they were allowed to beat us with). 

My brother had been pretty useless at P.E. so those teachers also had pre-conceived ideas about me. They rolled their eyes when they spotted my surname on the register. 

I really wish I'd been able to go to a different school or at least change my name before starting at Woodham Comp. It would have been nice to start with a clean slate. 


Year after year my work (and my school reports) seemed to get worse. For the first three years at Woodham I was bullied by a group of kids in my class. I was an easy target. And they knew I'd never tell any teachers because the only thing worse than being a bully was being a "grass".

 I'd go home with bruises on my arms and legs - but my folks would blame me for "fighting" and "causing trouble". It was all my own fault and I was a bad kid for upsetting my Mam - she had "enough worries" of her own.

Those first few years felt like being stuck in a tunnel with no light and no air. I feel as if I never looked up. I tried to keep my head down and not draw any attention to myself. 

Sixth Form was probably the time I enjoyed the most. By that point the bullies had left and I was mainly doing subjects I actually wanted to do.
 
And there was no more bloody P.E.


Just one year before I was due to leave, somebody set fire to Woodham Comp. It happened in the early hours of July 4th, 1990; the same day England played West Germany in the World Cup Semi-final.

All of the Sixth Form common rooms, the school Library, the Languages Department and most of the Geography Department went up in smoke. This was the sort of thing a lot of us had dreamt about. A huge chunk of the school - gone! But the reality was very different.


A few of us met up to look at the wreckage. We stood on the school playing fields in shocked silence. Twisted, smouldering metal and blackened sticks of wood rose up out of what was left of the school. Two of the biggest corridors had almost completely vanished. 

In previous years I probably would have been celebrating - or at least complaining that the P.E. block hadn't been torched.

But it all seemed a bit unfair.


Apart from us Sixth formers, all of the other pupils were told to stay at home until the start of the next school year in September. 

A new Sixth Form common room was hastily arranged in an unused kitchen. On clear days we'd pull desks and chairs out onto the school field and have open air lessons. Those few weeks in July were pretty cool - apart from England losing that semi-final.

A lot of us pretended to have lost Geography and English coursework in the fire - so we were given extra time to 'redo' our assignments. And it was brilliant for the A level Art students. We had so much great new material to study, draw and paint - right outside the art room windows.


It was probably the happiest time I had at Woodham Comp. For that last year we had to work around the wreckage and the ashes but it seemed like all of the academic pressures had been lifted.

There were only about thirty of us in the Lower Sixth and after the fire the staff were a lot less formal in the way they spoke to us. There was a sense that we were all having to 'muck in' and make the best of a crappy situation. Passing any exams would just be a bonus.


In August of 1991 I went back to Woodham for about five minutes to collect my A level results. That was one hell of an anti-climax. 

After seven years I had to pick up one small slip of paper with three grades printed on it. There were only a couple of people in the school that morning - just the Deputy Head and one of the secretaries. I didn't even bump into anybody from my year group. I wasn't expecting glitter cannons or a parade, but it would have been nice to say a 'thank you' or a 'goodbye' to some of the teaching staff.

I didn't feel like celebrating. I was just relieved to be moving on. My results were good enough. I wouldn't need to go back to Woodham. 


But I did find myself back there.
In early 2001 - almost ten years after my A levels - I applied for a teaching job at Woodham Comp.

The interview process lasted a whole day. I was given a guided tour by some of the pupils so I got to see how the place had been rebuilt following the fire. It looked just the same - except they'd added some lifts to make the place more accessible. 

Quite a few of the same teachers were still there. One of my English teachers was now the head of her own department and was in charge of all the interviews. 


 I was nearly 28 when I went back for that interview, but seeing a lot of the same corridors, classrooms and teachers made me feel like an 11 year old again. I didn't like it. 

It was almost a relief when I didn't get offered the job. I don't know if I'd have ever been able to stop thinking of myself as a pupil in that place.


It was another twenty three years before I made my final trip.

 In the intervening years I'd been a teacher, gotten married, become a father and then a widower.

I saw Facebook posts about the construction of a whole new school on the same site and the imminent demolition of the old buildings.


Arriving back in Newton Aycliffe on that Tuesday afternoon last Summer I expected to feel something...
 
But I don't quite know what.
 
A nostalgic glow?
A sense of closure?

Or was I expecting to feel fear and anxiety - or flashbacks to BCG jabs and furious P.E. teachers?

Maybe I thought I'd experience a sense of loss... One final nail in the coffin of my childhood? 

To be honest, I just felt weird.

The trip back to Aycliffe was strange enough. The main roads south of Durham now seem to be cluttered with branches of Costa, Burger King and KFC. Does everybody really need so much coffee and burgers?

But a lot of County Durham seemed greener than I'd remembered. Every thin sapling planted by Aycliffe council in the 1980s seemed to have thrived and blossomed in spectacular fashion. 


After all that, I only spent about half an hour wandering around my old school. 

In some ways it felt like I'd never been away. It was all so familiar - so much of the place had been burned into my memory. 

But without the people, without the faces and without the voices - it was just an empty shell.


What had I been expecting?

Ghosts?

There was no Mr Cummings yelling at me in French... 
Mrs Nicholson wasn't berating me for not having my top button fastened...
And the school fields were completely free of flailing, fighting kids...

Did I think it would be like diving down into the wreckage of the Titanic? There were no lost relics or skeletons in the classrooms and corridors, just bare walls and packing boxes.

Even the P.E. department - the scene of so many humiliations, the cause of so much anxiety - just looked a bit sad. Everything useful was already packed and ready to be moved to the new school buildings.

It felt like the morning after a party. Or closing day at the Overlook.


Some of the school buildings looked really shabby, like they were just about ready to fall down. It was clearly time for the old Woodham Comp to go.

I'm glad I went back.


I only wish I'd been there to see the bulldozers and wrecking balls tear the place to pieces.









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