Like a comfortable old pair of slippers, some places just wrap themselves around you when you walk through the door.  This has always been true of the red-brick Newcastle High School building on Tankerville Terrace.  When we left our building in July 2014, the only thing on our minds was change.  Areas of the school were viewed for ‘one-last-time’, the prevailing thought being one of uncertainty: what would survive and what would not?  What I do know is that the person-I-was-then would have been astounded to learn that, nearly two years further on, the south doorway would still look as it does in the shot above.  ‘If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it!’, I guess.

Of course there have been changes, but, very similar to the scene in ‘Raiders of the Lost Ark’ where the Ark of the Covenant is opened up with Indiana Jones tied to a stake with his eyes tight shut, after a period of great upheaval, many things ended up in the same place.  As you can see from Giuseppe’s photos of the Old Building interior at this time, the changes are just down to fixtures and fittings really.

At the north end of the bottom corridor, a new side door has been installed, but we now know this was a feature of the original design.

In some rooms, other than the strip back and plaster re-skim, the renovation work amounted to little more than new window handles.

And Boiler Rooms tend to have boilers in them.  We know from the local press article ‘New High School for Newcastle’ (most likely from The Newcastle Courant) that when the Newcastle High building first opened, the heating system was state-of-the-art.  The Description of the Building describes ‘the addition of hot water pipes and coils, the latter being so arranged in each class-room as to warm a large volume of incoming fresh air.  Each room has a separate system of pipes provided with a valve, so that the heating power will entirely be at the control of the teacher.’  From the same early news article we also learn that the building contract was let to Messrs Haswell & Waugh of Gateshead.  The new NHSG heating system in the process of being installed at this point, I am reliably told, is also state-of-the-art for the C21st.

The original hot water system was installed by Dinning and Cooke.  The old plans are accessible for viewing via Tyne & Wear Archives.  They are really fascinating.  I intend to explore them in a future post on the old Victorian Heating, but here’s a sneak view of the layout.

All buildings need toilets, of course, requiring a different kind of pipework.  In June, these were being installed all over the building.

The Office of the original Newcastle High School,  which backed onto the Mistresses’ Private Cloak Room, is now being used as Staff/Visitor Toilets.  Each cubicle has a wood-effect back wall.

A teal blue door is being fitted to every toilet cubicle in the  building .

Although at this point in time, the Girls’ Cloakroom in the Old Building, still in the same place as always, didn’t have any cubicles as yet.

There was a pulley-lift in the original Newcastle High School building, as I have explained before, although it wasn’t designed to carry people.  The modern platform-lift will do this now, but only if you keep your finger pressed down on the button for the full journey.

A comms cabinet would have been alien to Oliver & Leeson, but they were a familiar feature of the Church High building we left in 2014, of course.  There were three of them, you may recall.  One was in the LRC by the entrance stairs, another wall-mounted in the ICT Suite and the other in Mr Farrell’s IT Manager’s Office.  Only the first was on the ground floor, which is where the new comms cabinet is now – very close to where Mr Hearfield’s Catering Office used to be.

The Church High ICT Suite (previously the Library) has now been converted into two teaching classrooms.  The image below shows the décor in Room 31.  When you walked into the ICT Suite in 2014, this would have been the view straight ahead of you and, in the old Library, this is where the Librarian’s desk used to stand.  Whatever else may have changed, the door, at least, is still in the same place.

From the haunch, Giuseppe took a really atmospheric shot of this very same corner of the building at the strip-out stage of the renovation.  For me, it will always remain a beautiful yet haunting image.

‘Joy and woe are woven fine,
A clothing for the soul divine,
Under every grief and pine,
Runs a joy with silken twine.
It is right it should be so,
We were made for joy and woe,
And when this we rightly know,
Through the world we safely go’.