Old Haunts Pt 3

Another very important skate spot when we were growing up was our old school which was just across the main road. Years later it I would skate out front whilst waiting to be picked up by Kev on the way to go skate Chelmsford or wherever in the Dogmobile. I digress. Anyway, back then schools weren't prisons with paranoid caretakers assuming everyone had evil deeds planned when trespassing so we would skate there all the time.


That smooth bit out the front gate, nollie pressure flips, hello.



The stairs were probably the most skated aspect of the school, I know, me, skating stairs. Go figure that one out. But yeah, we all learnt a tonne of tricks down the 2 and then down the 3.



Steve Wilson recently sent me this old photo I hadn't seen in forever, it shows how the stairs were originally. No idea what I'm doing but the G&S Heinzman board dates this as about 1990.



This was the ledge spot, really. I remember learning a bunch of stuff on here and it was fun because it went from high to low. I remember someone had stolen a huge candle from church one time, it was like a canon shell, and spent the day waxing it to the point of doom. There were also some flat bars around the back where the bins were.



Another non-spot but this was fun for learning nosebumps and ollie over to pivot tricks.



To th right is the library and hall entrance, the hall where we would dance to Wham at school discos. Beyond that is the playground.



The playground was where we learnt to skate flat ground plus we used to bring over ramps or old lockers to skate as ledges. I remember we invented a great game, it was a mix of S.K.A.T.E. and British Bulldog. The person in the middle would do a trick, anyone who could land it would get to go over to the other side and anyone who didn't had to 'run' to the other side without getting tagged. Although in this game 'run' was changed for tic-tacing. You weren't allowed to touch the floor. Cue hilarious scenes of swarming tic-tacers. We need to play that game again.