The Gilberd 1966-67 - Unseen cine film of school life recovered!

Shortly after we had finished filming ‘The Gilberd North Hill - A Virtual Tour’ Eddie mentioned to me that he knew of one more piece of school history that really deserved to be seen by a wider audience. Thanks to Eddie’s foresight, a film capturing the experience of school life from 1966-67 still existed!

The film was made by Ken Brookes (who was a science teacher at the school) and was given as a retirement present for Ralph Sprason who was headmaster of the Gilberd between 1953-67. After Mr Sprason died in the 1980s his wife approached Eddie to see if the school would like to have the film back. The school were not interested at the time so Eddie kept the film safely before having it transferred to VHS in the late 80s/early 90s. 

Sadly, the person who made the transfer to VHS didn’t think to keep the original film, but fortunately Eddie had the VHS copy transferred to DVD in the early 2000s. He then passed the DVD to the Gilberd a few years ago and it has been held in their archive ever since.

I decided to get in touch with the Gilberd and spoke to the deputy head, James Mitchell, who also looks after the Gilberd Archives site on Facebook. Fortunately James was able to locate the DVD in the archive and Johanna Davenport at the school made a copy and extracted a digital file from the disc.

Eddie and I watched the film together on the 18th November 2021. It’s twenty minutes long and in colour but as there was obviously no sound we decided to record a commentary, with Eddie identifying the people, places and events that he recalled from what was his first year at the school.

I think anyone who went to school at the North Hill site will enjoy seeing this film but there are also fascinating glimpses of Colchester’s past, including Balkerene Hill before it was modernised, North Hill and the old Colchester Bus Station. This material and much more besides will no doubt appeal to those with an interest in local history.

So 54 years after it was originally presented to Mr Sprason, this amazing little film has survived and can now finally be enjoyed by Gilberdians everywhere.

Jonathan Moran

Update 6th December 2021

My thanks to William Bramhill who posted the following comment on Youtube about the building Eddie and I couldn't identify in the film:

The building at 3:20 is the Bunting Rooms in Culver Street, The top part is still there and looks much the same. Loofers and the soon-to-close TSB are on the ground floor.

I'm also grateful to Andrea Collitt at the Gazette for covering this story for the paper. You can read the online edition here and below you can see how it appeared in the paper today.