Precious pictures rescued of Oxford St Edmund Campion School

That is how many of us will remember our childhood days at school, both primary and secondary. How did we survive without the wonders of modern technology?

The pictures here were among a collection from St Edmund Campion School in Oxford that were due to be “binned and lost forever”.

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Thankfully, they were saved by former pupils Ray Doran and Noel McCabe, with help from friend Will Gardner, and despatched to Memory Lane.

Of course, youngsters didn’t spend all day at their desks as we see in Picture 1. It dates from 1981 and shows Bronan McCabe, John Carton and others in a school play.

2: Pupils at St Edmund Campion School (Image: Oxford Mail)

In Picture 2, we see Helene Day and Junie Deegan with a teddy bear, which played a major role in a study to help deaf and hard of hearing children.

The idea was to encourage pupils with hearing difficulties to make a sound, which would illuminate the teddy’s eyes.

The Oxford Mail published the story in 1972 under the headline, ‘Teddy with a Heart of Gold’.

Picture 3 was taken in the school’s deserted art room in 1958, while we can identify headmaster Mr Taylor and Father McKenna among those in Picture 4 taken at Our Lady Help of Christians parish church at Cowley in 1970.

St Edmund Campion School in Oxford (Image: Oxford Mail)

Picture 5 features pupils Chris Cooper, John Lever, Joan Murphy and Marie Ostojan, and in Picture 6, we see the impressive school building.

Pupils at St Edmund Campion School (Image: Oxford Mail)

Sadly, it is no longer there. St Edmund Campion School, which opened at Iffley Turn in 1958, later became St Augustine’s School, which closed in 2003.

St Edmund Campion School in Oxford (Image: Oxford Mail)

A housing estate was built on the site and pupils now go to Greyfriars Catholic School in Cricket Road, Cowley.

The original school was named after St Edmund Campion, who was born in 1540 and became a student and fellow at St John’s College in Oxford.

As lecturer in rhetoric, he entertained Queen Elizabeth 1 at a debate in Latin.

He accepted a travelling scholarship to Ireland, but maintained his links with Oxford, including dedicating his history of Ireland to the Oxford University Chancellor, the Earl of Leicester.

However, in 1581, he was arrested as a Roman Catholic agitator and martyred at the Tower of London.

Campion Hall in Brewer Street, Oxford, a private hall set up originally in 1896 when Catholics were again allowed to attend Oxford University, is also named after him