Site last updated: 2 September 2009.
There will be no further updates to this site (see below for explanation).

Photograph kindly supplied by Chris Bullock

Time for a change

As anyone who has tried to create and maintain an Internet website will confirm, it can be a tedious and time-consuming business, even with the best of tools. Organising the material so as to be able to do a regular update is important, and I am failing increasingly as the weeks go by. So, apart from running out of server storage space here, I have been looking for an alternative that will be easier to maintain, and think I have found one that is acceptable — to me, at least!

One important factor in this decision is that I now have so many new scanned items that if I wait until I have time to organise them properly, many of us won't still have the energy to use a computer! Using the new "blogging" site, I can feed stuff into it whenever I have a spare few minutes (and you can post comments and new memories directly to it too). I can make available scans that I would never have time to transcribe into a form I could use on this site. There are many advantages, but the new style will take some getting used to, for me and for you.

I shall be leaving this site as it is now, and shall be posting new material on the new site at http://oldwodens.wordpress.com. Please add this to your browser favourites. The new site is a bit of a mess at present, but rather than leave you without any postings for another couple of weeks, I am letting you get at it now, and have a look around. Comments welcome; creative comments all the more welcome!

I shall be moving sections from this site to the new one as the urge takes me, so you may need to use the search engine on the new site to find what you are looking for if it's not here.

Schooldays were the happiest days,
Now they seem so far away.
I remember and I'll always treasure
Schooldays were the happiest days of your life
But we never appreciate the good times we have
Until it's too late.
Now I wish I hadn't strayed,
And I'd go back if I could only find a way.

wrote The Kinks, in Schooldays. Now - thanks to Friends Reunited - whose simple idea has brought so many old friends back together, and has inspired this website - this need no longer be the case. We can all share our memories and our photographs!

Many others have said, "School days are the happiest days of your life"; Mr Riley, English teacher at WBHS around 1967, discounted this, saying, "...there are better things to come ...". Perhaps both were right and both were wrong: we can enjoy remembering the good times at school and college or university, but we can also relish even the bad memories, tempered by the passage of time.

I hope this site will wallow in both types of nostalgia: mostly happy and affectionate memories, but also reflect on some of the bad times (but no potentially libellous material will be included!). I can provide both and I hope you, my visitors, may provide me with some more anecdotes to entertain us all.

This is a web-site devoted to memorabilia and photographs related (initially) to the 1963-1970 period of WBHS. Once I have exhausted my (fairly considerable) stock of material, how much further the site develops depends on old boys and staff. I shall welcome any stories (longer than you might wish to put on Friends Reunited), photographs, scans of programmes, notices, posters and any other school paraphernalia.

I am not intending my site to be a competitor for the excellent Friends Reunited site - to which must go thanks for inspiring me to set about this task. I shall not be including e-mail addresses (except my own) here; for that you must go to their site. I am now happy to include mini-CVs of old boys if anyone wishes, and - if individuals agree - shall be happy to pass on an e-mail address if any Old Woden requests it. I shall never publish others' e-mail addresses on the site as that could cause an increase in Spam for those people.

I am indebted to Mr John Clifford, Coordinator of the Old Wodens' Association for his blessing (in principle, without having seen it!) for this venture. John has also kindly loaned me his substantial archives now that I have almost run out of material. I am also grateful to Margaret Hiscox (who has spent many hours seeking out and collating information about the School) and to all other contributors who are identified near their articles.

Important note:

If there is anything anyone doesn't like on this site, or if I have inadvertently published copyrighted material here, please don't sue me - just send me an e-mail and I will remove the offending item immediately, with a suitable grovelling apology if you need one!

David Perry, WBHS 1963-70
webmaster@wbhs.info

Number of visitors since 20 April 2002:

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