It took some time to decide on an image of the stage as the majority of us will fondly remember it.  In the end, I chose this wonderfully evocative shot of House Performing Arts from December 2008.  In keeping with our tagline ‘A Voice for Every Girl’, the stage can here be seen jam-packed full with happy, confident-looking girls – the Bamburgh House musicians to be precise – all totally at ease with their special celebratory moment performing in front of the rest of the School.  The dictionary definition of a stage is ‘a raised floor or platform on which actors, entertainers or speakers perform’ and indeed a ‘platform’ is how it was described on WH Wood’s architect’s plans.

There is no reference to the stage in the very first newspaper report on the new building in 1888, although we are told the ‘Assembly Hall will be a handsome room, with panelled dado and open timbered hammer-beam roof.’  However, the first reference to the completed Tankerville Terrace building in the 1935 Jubilee Book actually focuses on the stage: ‘On May 3rd, 1890, the new building was opened by Miss Helen Gladstone [Prime Minister Gladstone’s youngest daughter], and the platform party included the Bishop of Newcastle, the Venerable Archdeacon Hamilton, Canon Pennefather, Dr Garnett, the Principal of Armstrong College, and other members of the Local Committee.’ 

The very first Newcastle High School prospectus held by Tyne & Wear Archives contains a photograph of the Hall which must closely represent how the platform would have appeared on this occasion.

As a truly independent Independent School, Church High had to raise its own finance should site developments be required.  So it was in the early days of Newcastle High School too.  The Jubilee Book tells us that by 1897 ‘the school had already begun its policy of trying by its own efforts to raise money both for itself and others.’  At that time, thanks to performing tableaux vivants and a sale of work, £22 was raised, £15 of which was spent on pictures: ‘seven for the Hall and one for each form room’. Some of these pictures can clearly be seen in the image above as can the beautifully-carved ‘reading desk’, so familiar to anyone who knew Church High, which was bought ‘a year or so later’ with £9 raised via more tableaux vivants.

Thanks to the 1935 Jubilee Book we know that ‘The Church Schools Company allowed the School honours boards for the Hall to record the names of holders of the school scholarship, which had been instituted in 1906.’  However, these were not the Honours boards we all remember, at present being stored in Tankerville House.  ‘In 1911, the boards were replaced by the present Honours boards at the back of the platform, which were given by the Old Girls to record the names not only of the scholarship holders but of the winners of University honours.’

Again thanks to the Jubilee Book, we know that later on ‘a fund was started for buying a grand piano’ and that this fund also ‘received substantial help from the Old Girls who had already formed a dramatic club and were beginning to give something back to the school.’  On the evidence of photographs of the Hall in School prospectuses, the grand piano seems to have been successfully purchased by 1927/28.

Right up to Heritage Open Day in 2014, however, the Church High stage was synonymous with three pieces of wooden stage furniture.

Two splendid wooden items were purchased for the stage in recognition of the School’s Jubilee year in 1935: a chair and table.  The Jubilee Chair, on which every Church High Headmistress has subsequently sat, was commissioned at a cost of £17 and presented to the School by the staff.  If you ever looked closely at it, you would have noticed the following inscription at head height: ‘The staff of 1935 give this chair to mark the fiftieth year in the life of the school.’

A matching oak table was also presented to the School, this time by the girls, as part of the Jubilee celebrations.  Every Church High Headmistresses up to Miss Davies has sat behind this table for assembly and it was always positioned with the engraved side facing the Hall displaying to all the following inscription: ‘The girls of 1934 – 1935 give this table to mark the fiftieth year in the life of the school.’

A later school prospectus (post 1935) shows the platform as most people will remember it: with Jubilee Table and Chair in the centre and with a wooden pelmet over-head to allow the introduction of stage curtains, which in this image look very dark.  A wall clock (presumably for school examinations) has also been introduced and the observant will have noticed the stage has now also been boxed in.

I joined Church High in the Autumn Term of 1985, consequently just missing the Centenary Staff photograph taken in front of the stage.

The first school production I remember was ‘The Mikado’, but the first I photographed for the Senior School Magazine was ‘The Taming of the Shrew’, a lively production directed by Jill Mortiboys, Head of English.  At that time, the stage curtains were a deep yellow gold velvet with a light grey velvet back-curtain for production use.

One of Jill’s finest productions, in my opinion, was ‘The Importance of Being Earnest’ in 1988.  The design suited the Church High stage so well and amongst a very strong cast – including Mrs Cox as Lady Bracknell – was Lucy Webster (Gwendolen) who went on to have a very successful acting career under the name of Lucy Akhurst.

Church High’s most successful professional actress, however, is Andrea Riseborough who has received acclaim on stage, TV and also the big screen.  She graced our stage many times as girl, of course.

In recent times, the stage curtains were royal blue velvet and with the advancement of technology it also gained a projection screen.

Just as Newcastle High School prize giving moved from the Hall to a larger venue, so the Church High school production – in latter years large-scale musicals – transferred to The Little Theatre in Gateshead and later The Peter Sarah Theatre, Newcastle College.  However, House Performing Arts festivals continued to use the stage and who could forget those riotous Staff Pantomimes too?

With the introduction of A Level Textiles to the Creative Arts curriculum, the stage was extended via a catwalk for fashion shows.

Whenever I look at the modern platform at the north end of the old Hall, I for one still see all the dark natural wood and the shiny gilt of the Honours boards in my mind’s eye.  For me, it will always remain peopled by those who gave so much of themselves to the life of Church High, as it was for the 2000 Millennium Staff photograph.

Even as all of the stage furniture accumulated over the life of the School was being dismantled in the summer of 2014, for me, the Church High stage still managed to retain its dignified presence.

 

‘All the world’s a stage,’ said Jacques in ‘As You Like It.’  However, at NHSG, the old stage is a stage no more.  It is now merely a raised platform area in the Sixth Form Common Room.  In the above image, taken in October 2015 after the north end Honours Boards were removed by Wates, the Church High stage layout is still recognisable from the two bricked up doorways, stage left and right.  Yet only one of these, the one to the right, is original.  You can still see the stairwell in front of it – site of more than one dramatic calamity over the years.  I’d never really considered why it was like that until I talked to Paul Brown, one of the joiners, recently.  He mentioned in passing something I should have realised from old photos.  There’s actually an earlier – semi-circular – low-level stage underneath.

As Paul did the initial joinery work needed to extend the stage, it was he who removed the ply-board at the front.  When we talked back on Tankerville Terrace, he said he wished he’d mentioned it to me at the time so I could have taken photographs.  However, if you look closely at the images above and below, I actually captured the first stage in March without realising it.  God is kind.

Giuseppe told me that the new, shaped extension to the old staging is his favourite modern architectural element of the renovated Tankerville building.  The company who provided this specialist joinery service in April were Aspen Joinery.  Neil and his brother, Dave, also re-modelled the steps in the eaves Marketing Office too.

Although the specialist joinery work was carried out in April when I was still allowed access to the building, on my visits I only saw the very start and the end of this process for myself.  However, as Giuseppe was on site inspecting work on the 7th, 8th and 11th April, the photos he took document the transformation of the stage more effectively – and more dramatically – than I could ever have done.

When I first joined Church High, the door stage-left was the way Miss Davies always entered the Hall for whole school assembly each morning.  The heavy clunk of the door closing and the sound of her foot-fall in the back stairwell which lead up to the stage was the School’s cue to fall silent before the hymn number was announced.  Both entrance doors were used during school plays, of course.  However, as large-scale musicals became prevalent in recent years necessitating a bigger stage area, the final time the Church High stage was used for a dramatic performance was the 2013 Staff Panto.  If you never got to enjoy the backstage area mid-show, the following photos I took during that last pantomime give you some idea.

Aspen Joinery completed installing the bespoke stairs on April 7th.

The next stage of Aspen’s work was to add a further level of tiering to the newly-extended platform creating a high standard finish.

I was fascinated to see in one of Giuseppe’s photos that creating this lower tier stage-right revealed a small section of unpainted dark wood panelling.  This is how the Hall would have looked originally.

In my next post I intend to take you on a trip down memory lane as far as the School Hall is concerned, but, for now, I will leave you with two final images.  Firstly, how the ‘Mark 3’ stage looked when Aspen had completed their work on April 26th followed by the finished product: the raised seating area of the NHSG Sixth Form Common Room as it appeared on Church High Alumnae Open Day.

Going back to 5.00pm on Thursday 26th May, you may remember I sat on a low wall outside the Old Building while an ‘under-cover’ agent went in with my camera to photograph the Hall beams for me.  Well, I was actually left sitting there for quite a long time. Longer than I’d expected to be.  And, however much I love the red-brick Victorian architecture, the basement of the 1935 north extension offers little to occupy one’s mind for long.  Even a mind like mine.

In his commentary written for the Old Ordnance Survey Map of Jesmond for 1913 , Alan Godfrey provides the following description of the school building and, in particular, its architectural style: ‘Jesmond’s first purpose-built school, the High School for Girls, was opened in 1890 in Tankerville Terrace, a development of a school set up in Jesmond Road by the Church Schools Co. in 1885.  It was designed by the Newcastle architects Oliver & Leeson, the ornate cupola and Flemish gables giving it some of the bravado of the Moor Edge institutions.’  The ‘ornate cupola’ refers to the original bell-tower, of course, but, until I read this description, I had never really thought about the distinctive design of the gables.  To me, it was just what ‘Church High’ looked like.

As the old saying goes, however, ‘Absence makes the heart grow fonder’.  Thus, during the time we were forced out of the building, I found myself noticing many things about it I would not have given the time of day to had I still been working inside of it every day.  I cannot imagine myself googling ‘Flemish gables’ under any other circumstances.  Nor being intrigued there were Dutch variants too.

When I got home that night and checked the photos Paul had taken, the ‘extra’ shots he said he’d taken because I couldn’t have got them and because I’d said I liked architecture turned out to have been taken high up on the roof.  No wonder I had spent so long sitting on that wall.  As I’d already seen, thanks to some of Giuseppe’s photographs, it’s a different world up there and the views are simply amazing.

The roof scaffolding was largely around the north gable end at this point, so Paul’s photos are all from this area.  My favourite shows the fabulous double roofline of the original High School building looking south towards the United Reformed Church.  It includes the fascinating inverted triangular section of roof at the centre of the building which I had only previously seen via Google Earth online.  I had always thought this to be the site of the bell-tower but have since learned it was an integral part of the Victorian ventilation system.

Paul took another interesting shot further to the right of this one which shows the full length of the re-tiled west elevation looking south towards the Science Block.  Old pictures of this section of roofline clearly showed sections of different coloured tiles where the original dormer windows were once situated.  That’s not at all apparent now as the tiles have gone back on in different places.

A shot taken much further to the left of the north gable end, possibly right at the very end, shows the Science Block from another angle.  What I like about this picture is you can clearly see how the building expanded at the back – using the original playground area to do so.  The consequence of this was a gradual reduction in outdoor space for the girls, of course – something the building’s first extenders had sought hard to avoid.  We are now left with only a small inner courtyard.  The picture also shows recent building work to the west of the Tankerville site.  The Nuffield Unit and old tennis courts are now in the process of being transformed into a care home and nursery.

While he was up there, Paul clearly did virtually a 360 degree turn.  The next two shots on my camera were of the roofline to the north-west of the north gable looking towards the copper-panelled new build.  At that point in time, the 1925 Science Laboratory extension – initially built on stilts to retain playground space and most recently used as two Geography classrooms – was in the process of being re-tiled.  Another shot shows the flat roof of the new infill extension.

If I asked you how many chimney stacks were up there on the roof of the Main Building, would you know?  It certainly wasn’t something I’d ever considered until Giuseppe photographed and documented them all as part of the roof repair process.  Well, there are actually 12 of them up there!  That day, Paul photographed two for me from the north gable.  The first still has a Victorian terracotta pot in situ.

For me, it was the pot-less chimney stack Paul photographed which proved to be the most fascinating.  From the ground, the architectural details on some of the stacks is not obvious at all.  However, up close, the stacks on the original Newcastle High School building, such as this west-facing chimney on the end of the north gable, all feature stonework carved with intricate scrolling at their bases.

The obelisks, of course, are much more easy to see from the ground.

I’ve no doubt I shall refer to this book again the future, but the detail below from Plate 118 in Pierre Chabat’s book ‘Victorian Brick and Terra-cotta Architecture’ (1989) featuring the gables of 16th & 17th Century buildings in Amsterdam and Haarlem shows just how much Oliver & Leeson were influenced by Flemish architectural style.

As I will probably never get up there myself, I’m really grateful to Paul for the unique view of this beautiful old building he provided me with while I sat there waiting down below on my little wall.  The abiding image I was left with, however, once everything had been assessed and absorbed, was that there have clearly been seahorses sitting high up on the roof of Newcastle High School since 1888.