Former East Grinstead school pupils reunite after 60 years: meet-up celebrates anniversary of Sackville School’s opening

Former pupils met up to celebrate the 60th anniversary of the opening of Sackville School in East Grinstead. Photo: Google Street ViewFormer pupils met up to celebrate the 60th anniversary of the opening of Sackville School in East Grinstead. Photo: Google Street View
Former pupils met up to celebrate the 60th anniversary of the opening of Sackville School in East Grinstead. Photo: Google Street View
Former East Grinstead school pupils met up this month to celebrate the 60th anniversary of the opening of Sackville School.

Around 25 former Sackville pupils and their partners gathered at The Crown in Turners Hill on Sunday, September 8.

Keith Lindsay, 71, who now lives near Hastings, said: “We all started there in Sackville in 1964, the year the new school opened and we were the first year.”

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He said the (then) newly completed Sackville secondary school had moved to Lewes Road from its previous site in De la Warr Road. The new school featured a gym and a science lab, as well as woodwork, metalwork, art and domestic science rooms, which many pupils, who were 11 when they started there, had not encountered in their junior education.

Keith called the meet-up a personal celebration, saying it was not officially associated with the school.

He said: “Sixty years is a long time for people to have known each other to still be in touch.”

He said: “A core group of us have managed to keep in touch over the years aided by all this ‘new tech’, which we really didn’t believe was possible when we started at Sackville.”

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Keith added that some pupils remained in touch since the 1960s, but said it was only the spread of social media that allowed them all to ‘get talking again’. Some of the attendees had come to the event from ‘a few counties away’ but Keith said: “The furthest was from New Zealand who fortunately was visiting the UK anyway.”

At The Crown event, Keith said many of the 71-year-olds (‘and some a year or two either side’) shared their memories of their first days at Sackville. These included having to walk to the Chequer Mead site for lunch, and then back, because the new canteen was not finished. He said they also talked about former teachers, incidents, exchange visits to Germany and visits to Pike House in Battle and Stafford House in Hassocks.

Keith said: “Back in those days it was all fairly rigid school uniform. Girls used to wear berets, we used to wear caps. It all sounds very archaic in a way now.”

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