The good old days: King Offa's centenary researchers in a class of their own

The scene was King Offa School, where pupils have been busily researching the history of the school, which celebrates its centenary next month.

Just how industrious the youngsters have been quickly became evident both by the spot-on answers they gave and the intelligent questions they asked last Friday morning.

Under the guidance of Mrs Ince and Miss McDaid, Forms 5I and 5M gathered in the school hall to examine with care the Observer's accounts of the events of 1907 in one of its fragile bound files.

The boy who came back with the accurate and unhesitating answer of 7,918 had found exactly what it had cost the ratepayers of Bexhill to erect and equip the town's first council-built school.

Already, former staff and pupils are responding to headteacher Jenni Miller's appeal for those with memories of the establishment to come forward.

First known simply as The Council Schools (when built it took mixed infants and junior girls), it later became home to the Down Infants' and Down Junior Schools, being re-named King Offa Primary in 1975.

The children had done their research thoroughly. They knew that the plot of land adjoining the Down had cost 1,000 and that it had previously been the site of the town Workhouse.

By going through copies of the school log, they had found that the first headmistress was Miss Lucy Bizley - and that of her teaching staff of four, two were untrained.

They knew that 7,918 had built and equipped the first half of the school and that the second half was added in 1912.

What they didn't know was that into that first half had been packed roughly the same number of children now accommodated in the entire school.

The irony of a situation in such pupils were sent to Westdown Road on the other side of the Down while their school was requisitioned by the military in the First World War was not lost of them.

The building, later St Francis' School, had been a school for German boys...

They had found a reference to girls in the school knitting socks for soldiers who were enduring the water-logged misery of trench warfare on the Western Front.

They were fascinated by the fact that children of their grandparents' generation had to dash for the safety of World War Two air raid shelters.

Was the school ever bombed? Was a teacher killed..!?

They wanted to know so much more.

Many of their questions will now open up fresh avenues for research. Some are points to which former staff and pupils responding to the headteacher's appeal may well have the answers.