By Peter Norris

It all started towards the end of 1985. Carnforth High School Association (Parent-Teacher organization} approached ne with a view to my writing the 25 years’ history of the school. I suppose I had dual qualifications to help me with the task. I am the Head of the History Department and I have now been in this post for 23 years. I asked the committee not to set a deadline, as I would have to fit the time allowed for the project into all my other activities. In the event, I was able to complete the manuscript, photocopy all the illustrations and present it at a committee meeting in May 1986, before my commitments to the CSE and GCE Examination Boards became too pressing.

The first obvious source of information was the school log book which proved invaluable in many respects. For example, with its help I was able to compile a list, in chronological order and showing lengths of service, of all the 134 permanent and 47 temporary members of staff, beginning with A.J. Parkinson, the first headmaster, and ending with P.A. Legon, the present holder of this post.

One of the 5th year girls who left in 1985 produced a sheet of caricatures of the whole staff. This was quite unconnected with the school’s history, until I persuaded her to enlarge a few selected faces for inclusion in the proposed book.

I managed to trace one of the original School Governors of 1959, John Easter Roberts, himself a local historian. He kindly provided me with much interesting information about how the school came into being, and about educational provision in Carnforth before 1959, going back in fact, to 1872, when the Church of England erected their school at the junction of Haws Hill and Lancaster Road. John Roberts was also able to tell me about the conception and birth of Carnforth Swimming Pool, built adjacent to the school and opened for use in 1978.

School magazines provided much evidence, but unfortunately school magazines at Carnforth have tended to come in waves, with several years of production, then a gap, then a resurrection after a few years, with a change of name. Several items were in fact extracted, but the gaps did cause a problem.

Illustrations, over 100, mostly photographs or newspaper cuttings, came largely from three sources – the collection of a colleague which dated back to before the beginning of the school, secondly, from a comprehensive collection of photographs taken in and around the school during the past ten years by a colleague with a particular interest and expertise in photography and finally from my own pictorial evidence.

Many of my own colleagues have been interviewed – in particular, the one original member of staff still remaining and also the teachers most involved with foreign exchange visits, the Duke of Edinburgh’s Awards and the two Scooter Marathons, the second of which gained the school a world record and a place in the Guinness Book.

Several ex-pupils were also interviewed or asked to write their reminiscences, including Clifford Small (one of the original intake), Mike Walker, a star of American football (fortunately in Carnforth at the time), Alan Tayler, Cup Final hero of 1975, George Brocklebank, 16 year old shot putt sensation, and Caron Skelhorne, recipient of the Duke’s Gold Award.

As the school has in fact been two schools, Carnforth Secondary from 1959 to 1973 and Carnforth High from 1973 to date, it has possessed two school badges. Two current school artists were commissioned to paint monochrome copies of the badges and to this I added information I had obtained which related the first badge to the coat of arms of the Washington family of Warton.

I wrote an article based on several historical excursions with children to London, jogged my memory and produced a section on nicknames and utilised several efforts at original poetry and prose composition which had previously appeared in school magazines.

Not all was plain sailing, though. At least two ex-colleagues declined to contribute, while a few promised from ex-pupils failed to materialise.

However I received enough positive assistance to make this, almost my first literary effort (I once wrote a script for a school play), feel quite pleasurable and worthwhile.

The book will shortly be published and it is to be hoped that enough copies will be purchased by existing pupils and particularly by their older relations (who incidentally may find some written or pictorial reference to themselves – there are over 600 recognisable faces) to make a significant increase in the funds that the school may begin to use during the next 25 years.

Published in Mourholme Magazines Issue 12 Autumn 1986