The Radcliffe School, Wolverton report Autumn 1958.

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  I went to the Radcliffe from 1960 to 1965. Both my sisters too. It was a great school with good facilities and a high standard of teaching. I realise this with hindsight of course! We travelled in from Lavendon (in Bucks) on the red Oxford bus via Olney and Newport Pagnell and home again on the same service. Teachers I remember as well as those mentioned above are Mr Giddins (German) Mr Jowett(?) who took Chemistry and Miss Murgatroyd (Biology). And who could forget Froggy the games mistress!

  By Daphne Wills (06/09/2023)
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  I was a pupil of the Radcliffe School, Wolverton from September 1960 and July 1967. At the time I joined it moved from the old Grammar school buildings my parents were educated in to new buildings on the edge of town near the road to Stony Stratford. It was not a Modern Secondary or comprehensive at that point but a Grammar-Tech, taking a four stream entry of 100 at 11 and a further few mostly boys at 13.
  The old head DE Morgan who had joined the school in my mother’s time (she would have left in 1937) was head master during the time my older brother and I were there. I think Mr Orchard became head in my last year, or possibly two and he had been appointed with the specific intention of overseeing its conversion to a much larger comprehensive school.
  There were several other staff still serving from my mother’s time at least, including Mr Thomas (French), Mr Long (physics) and Miss Full (originally PE but senior mistress in the ’60s). The catchment reached from the Bedfordshire border village of Lavendon to Thornton near Buckingham so quite a proportion of pupils travelled by coach. This being the case, many extra curricular activities took place at lunchtime as there were few, if any buses home after 3.50. As seniors we might stay for school society or science society but this meant waiting until 5.40 for a bus home.
  School matches happened on Saturday mornings and we travelled away as far as Biggleswade, Bedford, Northampton, Leighton Buzzard and all the South Bucks schools. In my last two years our hockey 1st XI never lost a match and in my final year, won all their matches, several girls having played for the team for 3 years. As well as school plays, (we did Romeo and Juliet, and Much Ado About Nothing while I was a senior) both my brother and I were involved in the Operatic Society. I performed in Mikado, Yeoman of the Guard, Pirates of Penzance, Trial by Jury and finally the Merry Widow. It was a vibrant and successful school at the time. My year saw the biggest sixth form ever of pupils who stayed after O levels. One went into nursing, one to secretarial college and from there to work high up in Shell, two became librarians, one went to the Royal School of Music and almost all the remainder went either to university (one to Cambridge) or teacher training college.
  It is sad that this page about the school seems so thin on information about the school’s history.

  By Valerie Sutton (24/04/2022)