Smithdon High School on a chilly winters morning. Only about -10 degrees C in the classrooms then…. (Sandy Gerrard/geograph)
The long and somewhat stark vista of Smithdon High School cannot easily be missed by the everyday motorist as he/she drives northwards along the A149 en-route to Old Hunstanton and the freely scattered coastal villages that populate it along Norfolk’s north facing coast, home to many of its far reaching intake of pupils aged from 11 to 16 years old.
The school was originally constructed almost entirely of glass and steel, its design borne of the architectural talents of Peter and Alison Smithson and seen as the first example of brutalist architecture at its official opening in 1955.
It is now a Grade II listed building that is protected from any substantial additions or alterations without the approval of English Heritage.
Though the design may have been a revolutionary one, that mix of glass and steel did cause a few practical problems which, speaking as former pupil at the school, I can attest to. Temperatures in the summer months would often be uncomfortably warm, the drought hit summer of 1976 with its attendant plagues of ladybirds being an added issue for staff and pupils to contend with whilst, contrary to that, coats and scarves would often be needed in the winter in order to make conditions in the classrooms at that time of year vaguely bearable.
Some of these heat related problems have since been alleviated by the replacement of some of the large glass panes with similarly sized black panels.
From the farthest recesses of the playing field (Christopher Hilton/geograph)
“Heat related problems”. That’s putting it gently.
On a hot day, the inside temperatures in the school were hovering around uncomfortable at best.
We’d traipse from lesson to lesson, the white or light blue polyester shirts/blouses that made up the uniform splattered with sweat in the manner of a Jackson Pollock canvas. On such days but, bear with me here, only on the very rarest of occasions, an edict would be delivered down to the pupils from on high, declaring that, if we deemed it necessary, we could ‘undo your top buttons’.
The relief at being granted that small privilege was so unusual that, more often than not, some pupils would resolutely keep theirs buttoned up, convinced that the supposed consent to undo them was a cruel joke and would result in hundreds of perpetrators of sartorial sloppiness being given a mass detention.
More often that not, this involved standing in the assembly hall with your hands firmly affixed to the top of your head.
On the contrary, in the winter, a spell of cold weather would mean we’d sit in the classroom with yes, very genuinely, our coats and, quite often, hats, gloves and scarfs on.
How I yearned for Chemistry lessons on such days, an opportunity to huddle around a Bunsen burner for a spot of warmth.
Sometimes they’d even let us light one.
Much has changed at the school since I walked its strangely smelling corridors.
I noted, for example that, when I was invited back to the school a few years ago to present one of my books to the school library, the Head Teacher was considerably younger than I was, whilst the school garden, once a tantalising mix of rabbits, chickens and untidy vegetable plots, had been sacrificed for a series of new buildings, all of which were contemporary in design, containing classrooms that, clearly, had been liberally decorated with some of the most up to date educational requisites available.
Which was good to see.
The school’s library, in which, somewhere, one of my books lurks (probably with a liberal coating of graffiti on its inside pages) has recently been refurbished to provide twenty one new internet connected PC’s whilst it’s gymnasium, a place of dread for many of us back in the day, is listed under the Planning (Listed Buildings and Conservation Areas) Act of 1990 as having special architectural or historic interest.
Special architectural interest or not, I never did climb to the very top of the wall bars in there.
And. reacquainting myself with them on the day of my visit, I still wouldn’t….
…but I’d still welcome the opportunity to wander it’s corridors and classrooms again one day.
It’s that kind of place.
A steel and glass mermaid calling to you from a rocky precipice.