Great Yarmouth – forty years on!

An unexpected trip up to Great Yarmouth – Graham was going to have a look at a car there, and suggested I might go too. Forty years ago I started my teaching career at St Nicholas (Priory) Junior School in Great Yarmouth. I’ve never been back since!

So once we’d looked at the car (no good!) and had some lunch, we went into the town centre to find the school. It was an extraordinary building, more like a church. My class room window was the arch shaped ‘church’ window behind me.

During that first summer term the stone masons turned up to repair the stone around the window. The noise and the dust . . . . ! The building is now the Priory Centre which seemed to be a sort of community centre. It is in the corner of the market place nearest to St Nicholas church, which is now called Great Yarmouth Minster.

We walked through this little passage to the school. The timber framed building on the right is the birthplace of Anna Sewell who wrote Black Beauty.

The school has now moved further round the market place into a much more suitable building.

We had a look inside the Minster, where I went to church when I first went to Yarmouth.

Great Yarmouth Minster, which I knew as St. Nicholas Church

I moved to Gorleston after a while, and had a flat on Cliff Hill, which we found.

And lastly we went to St Andrew’s church, Gorleston, where I sang in the choir and also went bell-ringing. This is where I used to sing –

In the choir stalls at St Andrew’s church

I left Great Yarmouth at the end of 1978, after only a year and a term teaching at St Nicholas Junior School, and came back to Colchester to start teaching at Hamilton Primary School here. So this was an unplanned but very enjoyable and interesting day re-visiting the past!

Back in my studio – I’ve been painting a logo for our new very exciting venture, which I will be able to share in a few weeks time! 🙂