King Edward VI Aston School - History

History

The King Edward VI Grammar School, Aston was opened in 1883. In 1911 the girls' school moved out to a new building in Handsworth and merged with two smaller Foundation schools (Summer Hill and Bath Row). The whole Aston building was then used for boys. With the departure of the girls, the Pyramus and Thisbe Wall (which had previously served to separate the boys from the girls) was also removed. King Edward VI Aston is the only school in the foundation which still occupies its original site. The original buildings are still in regular use, but there have been significant alterations and extensions. In 1963, the "New Building" was opened. More recently, the school has added a sports hall and a building to house the languages departments, and has acquired the part of Frederick Road which formerly bisected the site.

The 1963 building, now known as Douglas House (after a double fronted Victorian villa that stood on the same site), has been extended and refurbished to provide four extra laboratories, a teaching kitchen, new classrooms for art, design technology and music, a conference room, a first aid room and offices. The extension was named the Watcyn Thomas Wing, after a former Welsh Rugby International who taught at the school for 37 years. It was opened on 20 May 2008 by Bob Simpson, an Aston Old Edwardian (as former pupils are known) and governor of the school.

Read more about this topic:  King Edward VI Aston School

Famous quotes containing the word history:

    Let us not underrate the value of a fact; it will one day flower in a truth. It is astonishing how few facts of importance are added in a century to the natural history of any animal. The natural history of man himself is still being gradually written.
    Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)

    The history of the world is none other than the progress of the consciousness of freedom.
    Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (1770–1831)

    The thing that struck me forcefully was the feeling of great age about the place. Standing on that old parade ground, which is now a cricket field, I could feel the dead generations crowding me. Here was the oldest settlement of freedmen in the Western world, no doubt. Men who had thrown off the bands of slavery by their own courage and ingenuity. The courage and daring of the Maroons strike like a purple beam across the history of Jamaica.
    Zora Neale Hurston (1891–1960)