THE OLD GYM

The Old Gym is the large building behind Lower School - a sort of smaller brother of the original lower-school building and dating from 1938. It has two entrances: boys on the west wing and girls on the east wing.

In the early years it lacked storage space, and the changing accommodation was insufficient. In 1946 a new "L"-shaped cupboard was fitted to make up for the previously inadequate storage. But there was still no hot water in the showers by 1952, and they still weren't working properly until 1956.

The changing rooms have large, open, prison-style shower areas. A teachers' shower area was converted into toilets at a cost of £275 in 1968.

The east wing housed a modern keep-fit gym in the '90s.

Matthew St.John donates the following anecdote, told to him by Mr Harkin in the mid '80s:

"If you recall, the changing rooms at either end had pitched roofs that just overlapped with the main roof. Often girls would get changed in one end and boys in the other. One enterprising young chap during the '60s or '70s (can't remember which - it was obviously a story from the dim and distant past) used to disappear after the end of the PE lesson and reappear when everyone was changed. Apparently when quizzed about this in later life he admitted to climbing up through the roof to the other end of the gym and watching the girls through a hole in the ceiling."

The building is one of my personal favourites from an architectural perspective, definitely in that early 20th century school style, and seems to have stood the test of time a damn site better than the comparatively crumbly New Gym. The Old Gym was mainly used for circuit training and basketball, and contained all those archaic PE devices like vaulting horses and medicine balls.

The Old Gym can be spotted in photos on the Lower School and Admin Block pages.