Forgotten RHS: Classrooms- Molly N
As rumour has it, when you walk down the classics corridor at night you can still hear stories of Greek myths or Latin chants of verb conjugations emanating from Classics 2…
No matter how many years you have been at the school or how many times you have walked down the geo/history corridor, there will always be parts of the school that go forgotten or unnoticed; whether it’s those weird tiny doors either side of the dias or what’s inside the Old Jellico (it’s squash courts for those of you that don’t know). So this week’s edition of ‘Forgotten RHS’ uncovers the hidden history behind those random classrooms that just disappeared one day or that you didn’t even know existed in the first place. Have they been abandoned? Or have they been repurposed?
IT:
First up is the IT storage room. What once used to be a bustling room of eager year 7s making paper aeroplanes, coding videogames or whatever we learnt in compass lessons, is now used to store an assortment of IT equipment. Its slightly precarious and perhaps even dangerous location at the very top of the classics staircase always made it an adventure, since it either involved standing for 10 minutes at the bottom of the stairs waiting for people to come down, or, if you were brave enough as a yr7, to squeeze between sixth formers and the wall with your massive bag. Nowadays, if you want to take a sneak peek into the room you need to muster up the courage to knock on the door of IT. When taking the picture, I learnt that the different colour carpet in the centre and corner used to be locations of staircases. This meant that it was a similar layout to the art/graphics rooms- with a balcony above the classroom. Apparently this meant that the stomping and scraping of chairs heard in the IT and media rooms beneath were even louder, which I didn’t think was possible!
Classics 2:
Keeping with the theme of the classics corridor, is Classics 2. While I understand that this is still used for some lessons such as finance or business, and clearly for some sixth formers’ alone time (they appear to be doing some valuable revision at the back), this has been included since it has been repurposed. It was only last year when I was learning about Caesar’s violent death in this classroom, and it seems like not much has changed with all the Roman decorations and Latin verses up on the walls. Even students’ books are still in the cubbies, making this feel very surreal. And the lack of natural light due to the boarded up window adds to the abandoned and ‘tucked away’ effect.
PSHE:
When I discovered that the PSHE room had been relocated I was in shock- what about the comfy chairs or fairy lights or warm radiator that, all combined, made for the perfect environment for quite a few people to accidentally fall asleep in?! Luckily, Ms Hemmens has made sure that the new PSHE room (in the MFL/psychology corridor) has kept its iconic artistic wall decor, fairy lights and more, so its not too much of a change. I understand the desire for this relocation; lesson discussions were often competing with the sound of food delivery trucks and the smell while waiting outside the door was … questionable. And at least now there is a great view of the school fields, rather than bins or trucks, although I’m not sure a quite so ‘cosy’ atmosphere is possible to achieve due to this.
When planning this article, I intended to include the old music school which has been repurposed for exams and other activities. However, after begging Mr Eales to unlock the building so I could take some pictures, I quickly realised that it would need an entire article to itself. Wondering down its eerie corridors and peering into rooms with lights flickering and dust gathering on valuable relics, I discovered some interesting, some disturbing, things. So watch out for next week’s edition in which I will reveal the secrets of the OMS…
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