The Northampton Technical College was opened in 1932. One part of
this new college consisted of a Junior Technical School with an initial
entry of 31 boys and 9 girls.
The Junior Technical School was
abolished under the 1944 Education Act and was replaced by the Technical High
School, which opened in 1945.
The first meeting of the new school's
governors took place on the 28th January 1946 when they approved the
appointment of P.J. Harris from the 3rd December 1945.
The next governors' meeting took place on the 4th July when they
decided to call Mr L. J. Gould, Mr B. S. Howard, Mr A. B. Moffat and Mr
J. F. Topping as candidates for the post of headmaster. They also
appointed Percy Tompkins as second master for the period from 1st April
1945 to 31st August 1946 with an allowance of £90 per annum on top of
his normal salary. They appointed Mr J. E. Linnell with an
allowance of £50 per annum for responsibility in handicrafts.
In September 1946 H. C. Perrin, M.B.E., Chief Education Officer for
Northampton County Borough, produced a schools development plan, which
stated in Para 113: -
Technical High School
At present this is housed in the
College of Technology. It is proposed to transfer T.H.S. to a new
site at the earliest opportunity. The school is to be for 660 i.e.
495 boys and 165 girls approx. (4 form entry with 30 in each form,
with one form of girls, whose curriculum would centre round
commercial subjects and more practical subjects such as Domestic
Science and Needlework).
In 1956/58 this part of the development plan was
implemented when the school moved onto its current site with the brand
new buildings including the famous tower. The first pupils moved
into the new tower block in September 1956, but as the remainder of the
buildings were still under construction, other pupils remained at the
Technical College until September 1957. The final few buildings
were brought into use by the end of that year. The official opening was
performed by the then Education Minister Geoffrey Lloyd.
[Read the
Chronicle and Echo report of the event and look at the 10-page
official programme]
At the time of the official opening, headmaster B.S.
Howard wrote an article for the programme, which gives much more detail
of dates and the construction. You can read it [here].
In December 1960, the Town Council finally agreed a
change of name, after much debate, and the school became Trinity High School. The name was to change
again in April 1969, when, after years of debate, it became Trinity
Grammar School. The 'Grammar' was dropped in 1973 when it evolved
into a 13-18 co-educational comprehensive Trinity School.
Two interesting articles
appeared in the Northampton Independent in the late summer of 1977,
written by journalist Lou Warwick, who had a son at the school and who was a
member of the parent teacher association. The articles document
the history of the school, records the battles over its name and discusses its conversion to a comprehensive.
This long battle over the school's name was
sparked because of concerns over the name "Technical High
School" which many saw as "second-rate". The change
to Trinity High School was a compromise and the battle continued to rage on until
just before the dawning of the comprehensive system when it finally
became Trinity Grammar School. "Buzzer" Howard was very much the
driver of this debate, as he tried to get the school Trinity Grammar
right from when he was first appointed.
[Read the Articles]
In September 2004, following the completion of part
of a £19m investment, the scholl
became Unity College, a Church of England Secondary School with
1,700 pupils. The much larger site incorporates the old Girls
Grammar School (later, Kingsley Park).
The development includes a new teaching block for
science, maths, English and IT as well as a county standard sports
hall. There will be access to a million pound all-weather surface
for outdoor games.
Until the major reconstruction
moved inside the old school in July 2004, a lot of it was still very similar
to our day. There are some photos taken in 2003 and the early part
of 2004 [The School in 2003]. In particular the hall
still looked the same, with the old University Admissions boards in
place, but no longer in use. There was also the large organ that had
been dismantled
from a church in Weston Favell and rebuilt in the hall by the staff. To read a newspaper article on the
organ, click [organ].
The building work to convert the school to a CofE
school started at the beginning of October 2003.
The Final Staff Party
Friday 2nd July 2004 was the final party for the staff of
Trinity School. Many members of staff were transferring to the new
Unity College, but some were not. There was also a sprinkling of
staff from the past. Gary Grimshaw was there along with Mr
Cummings, but it had not been possible to trace many of the others.
The party was held in the school hall, and there was a jazz band on
stage, but there were few speeches to mark the end of an era. John
Dawkins, a former pupil, reminisced with some tales of the old days, but
it was a quiet affair.
Still
Making News Until the End
On Monday 5th July 2004, Trinity School was featured
on BBC Look East:-
Students sit exams online
A school in Northampton is one of the
first in the UK to allow pupils to take exams online.
Trinity School is one of just a few schools across the country
to take part in the pilot scheme. On Friday, Year 10
pupils were able to write answers to exam questions on a
computer and obtain the results within minutes. |
The Last Day of "Trinity" as a
School
Friday the 9th July 2004 was the final official day of
the last-ever term for Trinity. Shortly after that
the builders moved in to the main building, and then the demolition of the old bridge between the
tower and the science and arts block began. The era of
Trinity School had ended.
More details on these events
can be found from the links below.
[Up] [Building the School] [Opening Day] [Independent Article] [School in 2003]
