Ullswater Secondary School Our School

Our school was a one storey L shaped building and relatively new when I started there in the mid-forties. All classrooms had large full wall outside facing windows and was very modern for its time. Down one end of the L arm was a purpose built dining room big enough to hold both senior and junior pupils sitting down to a hot 2 course meal daily. This same dining room also quickly converted to an assembly hall.

The school's situation was on rising ground next door to Penrith Park containing the ruins of Kendal Castle. Down the road was Penrith Grammar School and just up the road was Penrith railway station. A nice edge of town location.

The only problem we had no playing fields or recreation area other than the tarsealed playgrounds front and rear, it was as if they had been forgotten in the design of the school, especially when I view our well endowed New Zealand schools. Attached also to the school was the garden where horticulture was taught.

This then comprised our school. Recently in 2000 almost 60 years later I returned to have a look at "our school". The spick and span new school I remember on my first day looked decidedly sad now after almost 60 years, as I walked in the gates the place was silent , no noisy chattering of boys at play or teachers voices echoing across the playground. I enquired of a nearby workman and he told me the building was a no longer a secondary school but used as over flow classrooms for the various educational facilities when needed.