A mystery photo of the Main School Hall - by Ellie Strahan

A date in the past... mystery photograph of the Main School Hall by Ellie Strahan

For this project, I examined an old photograph of the Main School Hall that was once used as a postcard. I decided to try and find out the date of which it was taken. 

To give it some kind of place in the timeline, I had a look at a photograph of the school that had been taken in 1908. The first thing that led me to believe that the mystery photograph was taken after the 1908 photograph was the floor. The chequered floor we have today is shown clearly in the mystery photo but the floor is not there in the bottom photo. I thought that this might be due to the resolution perhaps but upon closer examination there is nothing to suggest that the chequered floor is there, not even a line. So the photo must have been taken after 1908.

The second thing that indicated me towards some kind of date were the boards at the back. They have not got the boards up at the back of the Main School hall that we have today. I therefore decided that if we found the earliest date on the boards in the Hall then I would have some kind of indication as to when the photograph was taken. We found the date the boards had been put up as shown in photograph (1911). This placed the photo between 1908 and 1911.

However, the pedestal can just be made out in the back left hand corner of the hall, and as shown in photograph D that was made in 1914. Therefore, I think that a new pedestal may have been made in 1914 for reasons unknown.

I also found out that the main school hall used to be used as a gym before the gym was built as shown by the gym apparatus on the walls of the hall, which isn’t there anymore.

All this evidence suggests that the photo dates some time between 1908 and 1911. 

• Do you know when this photo was taken? Was our young Sherlock Holmes on the right track? 

• Did you ever use the Main School Hall as a gym? What are your memories of this? 

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