NOW WE ALL HAVE BUS PASSES..................

by Michel Hooper-Immins

We began at Wollaston House in September 1958, the start of our secondary education at Hardye’s School and returned fifty years later- to the very day- to relive memories of those long-lost days and renew some of the many friendships made at school. Now we are all bus pass holders, but many of the faces were still recognisable, even if we had got rather bigger, fatter and [in some] slightly deficient in hair over the half century!

On Friday 19 September, 17 of us gathered again outside Wollaston House, 50 years to the day since we started there! From Bucharest, New Zealand, Suffolk, Derby, Oxford and Dorset, the class of ’58 came together for a remarkable reunion, excellently organised and planned by Colin Smith.

Today, Wollaston House- at the corner of Durngate Street and Acland Road in Dorchester- is the headquarters of the National Farmers Union and the Dorset County Show with a new name- Agriculture House. Wollaston House had ceased to be Hardye’s junior school in the 1970s, when the new Thomas Hardye School in Queen’s Avenue took over from the old Dorchester Grammar School in Culliford Road, renamed Hardye’s School in 1954. Thanks to the NFU, the class of ’58 enjoyed a tour of the house- trying to remember exactly which rooms our forms inhabited. Now was this 2c or 2b? As adults, we wondered how 20 of us could have sat in the seemingly small rooms- but of course we were much smaller then!

That evening, 34 of the class of ‘58 came to the Colliton Club for a more formal reunion, with a super buffet provided. There were old photographs to be pored over, so many names came tumbling out- many memories of 1958, when the world was very different. One of those long school photographs, taken by the late Graham Herbert in 1959, held fascinating- memories of other classmates and schoolmasters. Names came flooding back. Sadly, a few have left this world, but quite a few are still in contact.

Some I had not seen since leaving Hardye’s in 1965, but some of us have remained friends and in warm contact over five decades. I thought it remarkable how little changed many of our faces were 50 years ago. We promised another reunion in five years time, but maybe we will meet again before that.

 Some of the class of ’58 outside Wollaston House, fifty years to the day since they all started there! [left to right;] Michel Hooper-Immins, Clive Dickinson, Jon Pullen, Peter Kerle, Stuart Hargreaves, Peter Foster, Alan Potter, David Lacey, Colin Smith, Richard Sonley, Tony Salt, Hugh Meyers, Colin Foot, Alan Attryde, Jeff Hallett, Gavin Easton, John Hawthorne, Stephen Gould.