Inside Tudor Towers for the final time

This week I took a final look around the Tudor Block. Over the weekend, the roof was removed by the demolition team, who are completing the final strip of the building before they begin to take it down. The site is now quite dangerous, so I was accompanied by the construction site manager and the demolition supervisor, along with Miss Bessant from the Art Department to take some photographs. After our visit, the only people allowed on site will be the professional contractors. We were the last Churchill staff to set foot inside.

With the roof gone, rain falls through the building and pools on the ground floor

This was the final opportunity to get inside the rooms which have housed Churchill staff and students for over sixty years. Although the rooms have been completely gutted, there are still some signs of the lessons that once took place here.

“Tie back long hair…wear an apron” – hygiene regulations which no longer apply in the Red Zone in this food room, now open to the elements

It was quite a spooky experience, walking through empty rooms, surrounded by rubble and debris, with demolition equipment and construction materials for company.

The mural between the old ASC and Food is a relic of the building’s past

I hadn’t been to the top floor of Tudor for well over a year, since the rooms were sealed off after the Business and Computing team moved into the Alan Turing Building. The rooms up there felt completely lifeless, open to the sky above.

On the top floor of the Tudor Block

We finished our tour in the Chemistry block. All the internal walls have been knocked out, so it’s now just one big empty space with only the pipework and supporting pillars to break it up.

Inside the old Chemistry block

This single-storey building will be the first to be completely demolished. There will be no spectacular dynamiting, or swinging of giant wrecking balls. Instead, the buildings will be taken down piece by piece, brick by brick, until there is nothing left.

Pipework and rubble inside Chemistry

I think I was expecting to feel sadness, or sorrow, or a sense of the memories that the buildings had held. But I didn’t feel any of that. Tudor felt empty, lifeless, and deflated. As I walked round I realised that the spirit of Churchill, the laughter and the learning, comes from the people, not the bricks and mortar. All the joy, friendship and excitement is now happening on the opposite side of the school, in new buildings, with new memories being made. I shut the door on the Tudor Block for the final time, closing one chapter of the school’s history, safe in the knowledge that the next chapter has already begun.