Steve Turner's Unseen Gilberd School Photos - Part One

Back in 2020 when Eddie Ross and I were first discussing material about the Gilberd that might be 'out there', one of the early contacts we identified was Steve Turner. Steve and Eddie had worked together on a book to mark the closure of the North Hill site in 1985. This book included forty of Steve's photos from his visits to the Gilberd in 1982 to document school life.

Our hope was that Steve might have copies of these original photos and perhaps even the negatives of everything he took. I rang Steve up and we had a great conversation about the school, his photographs and life in general. I told him that I appeared in a couple of the photos and clearly remembered him taking them. 

Amazingly Steve said he had kept everything and he was really keen for all of his photos to be shared. Our conversation ended with Steve telling me to leave it with him as he'd need to dig the negatives out and then he'd come back to me.

A couple of weeks later Eddie rang me up to tell me that Steve had passed away suddenly. I knew from our discussion that he hadn't been in the best of health but I was really shocked. Steve had been so full of enthusiasm about everything when we spoke that it made this news very hard to hear.

After Steve's death I kept in touch with his sister, Carolyn Donnelly. Carolyn promised us that if she was ever able to turn up the photos and negatives she would pass them along. And true to her word, a few weeks back, Carolyn sent me an email to say she had found them!

And what a find! 182 images of school life. Most were taken on the 15th, 18th and 19th October 1982 but Steve had also come back to the school in December that year to take some photos of the orchestra rehearsing in the Large Hall. 

We quickly digitised everything and got the Colchester Gazette involved so that we could reach as many past pupils as possible.

Steve's wonderful photos record the normal life of the school, with staff and pupils going about their work. All the images are shot in natural light and those in the empty Lower School are the most atmospheric to me.

Writing about the project at the time in Eddie's book Steve explained:

For some time, I had wanted to return to the Gilberd to make a personal photographic record of the School. It was becoming increasingly apparent to me that the School's function was changing rapidly within uncertain local education policies; this gave a sense of time limit for the project. 

The photographs were taken during a week in the middle of October, and the Autumnal conditions seemed to echo the mood of the School. Since the first three years' pupils were no longer there, and several parts of the School were in relative disuse, the overall feeling was very subdued in comparison with my last memories of the School, nine years ago. Nevertheless, several aspects of school life struck me as identical to those I remembered; the smell of cutting oil in the metalwork shops, for instance, and the acoustic qualities of the corridors in the main building. 

Some of my teachers were still working in the School, others had gone. In many ways the place seemed both new and strange to me, time and circumstances changing us both.

The photographs were taken in two main categories - those featuring pupils were taken during language, art, craft and science lessons, and those featuring architectural and interior details were taken from and in all parts of the School.

All photographs were taken in available light using Olympus OM1 cameras fitted with 21mm, 50mm and 135mm lenses. Film used was Ilford FP4 and HP5 developed in Microphen. Prints (always using the entire negative) were made on Ilford Gallerie paper. 

Less than three years after I made these photographs, the North Hill site of the Gilberd has been closed. 

The documentary photograph's essential, and occasionally poignant quality, that of recording the visual "evidence" of the past, has already become apparent within this selection of prints; most show activities within the School that have now ceased, some even show classrooms that have since been demolished. 

An appraisal of my original contact sheets caused me to reconsider why I had initially undertaken the project of photographing my old school. The combination of personal expression and documentary perspective provided the answer and has, I hope, made these photographs into a record of enduring interest. 

Steve's photos will be presented weekly in three parts, each containing roughly sixty images. The vast majority of these photos have never been published before and those that have can be viewed in high quality for the first time. If you click on any image you can view a higher quality version of it.