Mr Stuart McLeod 1984 - 1988

Miss Alice De Cort and the Pupils of Year 4

Dear Alice,

Thank you so much for inviting me to your 150th Anniversary Celebration on 9th March. Sadly I am unable to come as I have invited all of the parents of our school to visit us that afternoon to see our Rights Respecting work. I would have loved to be with you all because your school has a very special place in my heart.

I taught Years 5 and 6 at St Michael’s between 1984 and 1988. I changed my cupboard door in Year 6 into a Tardis and got a flashing blue light from Bracknell Police so we could make it look like a real Tardis. When we studied history we could go back in time with our own Tardis. It was also my job in those days to manage the swimming pool, something that was not too pleasant, particularly the boys’ changing room! On Tuesday evenings I stayed very late at school so I could lock up after the Brownies and on Sunday mornings I also came to school because the church used the hall for coffee after church. I had many many happy memories. Unfortunately, I cannot access your blogspot on the website because our filter in school doesn’t allow us to, mad isn’t it!

My happiest memory would be that of getting married in St Michael’s Church and half of the school came along too, that was great fun, although I didn’t feel too well that day because I had one or two lemonades the night before.

Mr McLeod & Mr Knott in the stocks - July 1986

We celebrated the school’s 125th Anniversary in 1987. We had a Victorian Day and I am sure there are still photos around of that day. I produced a booklet for the occasion. I wonder if there are any copies of them still around? It was really good fun because I got to meet lots of former pupils. One lady I met on a Sunday afternoon at school had just arrived on a visit from Switzerland. She had been evacuated from London in the Second World War. She told me how scared she felt when the air raids were taking place upstairs in the school house where she lived after school hours.


I did help to bury a time capsule to mark the event. My class (Y6) were given the responsibility of organising the things we would put in it. There was lots of discussion…. and argument, but in the end we put things like coins, exercise books and I made sure there was a Beano comic put in too. I believe you are having problems locating where it is, is that right? The whole idea was that you would be able to find it so easily on the 150th Anniversary so we put it in an ideal spot that no one would forget! But none of us is there now, so there is a big gas tube buried in your school grounds with all of our work of 1987; I really hope you can find it.

Another very happy time was the work we did for the BBC Domesday Project in 1986. We had to go out and take photos of the area around us. We went down to the gravel pits and an Avenue near Crowthorne and took photos there of the giant trees.  You can see some of the work we did at http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/domesday/dblock/GB-480000-162000

In those days we only had one BBC Master computer in our class. You would laugh at it if you saw it today. It only had 256 kilobytes of memory which is tiny compared with the computers you will now have at St Michael’s.

We had lots of fun on the school field and it was there at the end of the school year that Year 6 played the staff at rounders. We were always so useless the children usually won. One day I took my class to the field for a games afternoon and two of my boys saw two men behaving in a strange manner at the opposite end of the field. The boys went off to investigate and I saw them running across the field. I ran after them because I didn’t know what they were doing. They were witnessing a house – burglary taking place and they took it into their heads to go and chase the burglars! Not a sensible thing to do really, but the men were eventually caught by the police.

It is now 25 years later and I have been headteacher at this school for 16 years. You may be interested to know that in every school I worked in since your school I have built Tardises and now the Headteacher’s Room here is a Tardis, with a huge Dalek on guard outside it that the parents built recently.

You have a super school and try to learn as much as you can. You never know, one day you might be invited to the 175th Anniversary! Do please give my love and best wishes to everyone at St Michael’s. I am honoured that you bothered to invite me and am equally sad I am unable to come but do have a GREAT day!

Yours sincerely,

Stuart B. McLeod