Queen Elizabeth Cambria comprehensive school was established in 1978 previously the building was the old girls grammar school and had opened its doors back in 1958, I was a pupil at this school from September 1989 until July 1997 and during the years since I have left there have been a great many changes. I suppose the biggest change was the announcement that Cambria and the neighboring secondary school in the town (Maridunum) would be merging and housed in a new purpose built school building. A few years ago both schools lost there own identity and became QE High, Cambria becoming known as the upper campus and Maridunum housing the lower campus. This new school building has been constructed on the playing fields at the Cambria campus and with it due to open its doors for the new term in September the two old schools will need to be demolished. On Saturday 24th May the school PFA organised an open afternoon which gave past pupils the chance to revisit their school days and walk the corridors one last time.

With these sorts of events you never know what sort of response you will get or what to expect, the article in the Carmarthen Journal had mentioned that there would be guided tour of the school and not much else. On arriving at the school there seemed to be quite a few people already there and once signed in and with a sticker with my name and years at the school I was all set. The school was open from 1pm - 5pm and they had attempted to have some sort of structure to the day with a programme of events but I felt this was ill advised as pre-event advertising had not made any mention of this and as a result the "welcome" which was billed to start at 2.30pm ran late as they were wanting to wait for as many past pupils as possible. They did have a few displays and even though I like my history I felt that a lot of the displays related to the time that the school had been a girls grammar school and even before the school of my generation had been built. I suppose this was down to the fact that the people organising the event had been pupils of the school pre-Cambria and I suppose over the last couple of years as the teachers who taught me have left and been replaced with new teachers that have little knowledge or interest in the more recent history of the old school. The principle guests were the two former head teachers of the school, Miss M M Wooloff (1960 - 1983) and Dr W A Evans (1983 - 2005) I don't really know why they were invited as they did not actually do anything but I am sure that the past pupils would have liked the chance to catch up with them.

I was surprised however that a lot of old teachers did not turn up, speaking to the current head teacher apparently they had been invited, of course the ones that did turn up were the ones that you always knew would turn up to such an event. More surprising was the lack of pupils from the more recent years to attend as the majority of the people who had come back to take a look around the school were from the time it had been a girls grammar school. I suppose those pupils who left the school over the past ten to twenty years did not feel the need to return for one last look around the school, maybe they would rather keep the memories of the school the way they remember it as I have mentioned at the start of this entry a lot has changed over the years since I left the school so yes it was good to visit old classrooms and remember the times spent in them but those classrooms have changed so much that all you really had was your memories.

It does seem a shame that a school that has existed since 1958 will soon make way for a bus bay and car park for the new Queen Elizabeth High

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