DO YOU remember Whammer, Lasky, Aggie, Jasper, Coffee Pot, Sherlock, Pluto, Fritz, Killer and Biff?

If so, you will have attended Cheney School at Headington, Oxford. These were some of the nicknames pupils gave their teachers.

Former students who were there from 1954 to 1972 are being invited to relive memories of their school days.

A reunion is taking place at the school on Friday, July 11, from 11am to 4pm to mark its 60th anniversary.

Oxford Mail:

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The day will include lunch and tea, tours of the school, talks and displays on its history and plenty of time to reminisce with old friends. Anyone with school memorabilia is invited to bring it along.

The organisers, former pupils Bernard Stone, Nigel Jones and Bryan Brown, have set up a special website at cheney1954-1972.org with full details and a form to register your interest.

Cheney Secondary Technical School opened in 1954, on land which had previously been part of the Morrell brewery family’s estate.

It replaced the Secondary Technical School which was based mainly in Church Street, St Ebbe’s, but which, at one time, operated on 19 sites across the city, causing much disruption to students and staff.

The move to put all classes under one roof was welcomed by headmaster Arnold Wainwright, known as Whammer.

He wrote in the school magazine: “While the Church Street premises had, as the house agent would say, an ‘old world charm’, with amenities in keeping with that description, the comforts of the new school, the equipment and the increased facilities, both inside and out, make for a more congenial atmosphere in which to work.

“Now indeed have we a home of our own! No longer do we crocodile, in fair weather and foul, from one building to another at peril to ourselves (and I fear occasionally to others).”

Pupils, some of whom helped move furniture and equipment from the old to the new site, were equally pleased.

One wrote: “Coming out of the Church Street School into Cheney School seemed like coming out of a ruin into a palace.”

Another wrote: “At the old school, you could never write on a desk without it wobbling, due to the uneven floor.”

Other comments included: “The air at Headington is cleaner and fresher. We can’t smell the brewery like we could at Church Street.”

The reunion will also celebrate the immense contribution Mr Wainwright and John Henry Brookes, the principal, made to the two schools and to education in general.

Bryan Brown has written a biography of Mr Brookes, whose name is perpetuated in Oxford Brookes University. It is due to be published in the autumn.

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