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This site began when I found a run of The Centaur – the magazine of Henry Mellish Grammar School on eBay. They were scanned and are now available to  view and download on the page tabbed above.

If you have copies of issues not yet in the list on the Downloads page that you would be willing to lend me to scan or have scans (as pdf files) to share please contact me using the form below. Similarly please contact me if you have any other HMGS memorabilia or photographs.

I only intend to cover the period of the Henry Mellish Grammar School, not the later period of its existence as a city comprehensive.

School photographs by Panora can also be downloaded or viewed on YouTube.

Copies of The Centaur or other material have been received thanks to:

Richard Bullock [1954-61]; Garry Humphreys [1957-64]; Mrs Malcolm Jackson (widow of Malcolm Jackson [1953-60]; Louise Walton (daughter of Peter Nequest (1929-1999)[1940-46] who had kept his copies of The Centaur); Roger Langham [1963-70]; Robert Dawson [1957-64]; Sir Neil Cossons [1950-58]; Simon Bailey (son of William Henry Mettam Bailey 1919-1999 [pupil 1930-36] – the actor Robin Bailey); Terry Glover [1947-52]; Andrew Turner [1963-68]]; David Hallam [1950-55]; Tom Elliott [1951-1959]; Annette Furuyama [1979-84]; Andrew Robinson [1970-76]; David Chambers [1953-59] (brother of the late John Chambers [1949-54]) for copies of The Centaur kept by his uncle, J.R. Chambers [1933-38]; Tony Seaton; David Mundy [1950-1957]; Martyn Shaw; Martin Phillips [1963-68]; Barrie Shelton [1955-1962], Nick Clifford, G. Norman Fearn [1942-49] (via his daughter Judy).

News of additional material is now being posted on a separate page.

As well as being a source of material for those of us who were there at some time, I am told that the site provides an insight into what life was like at a boys’ grammar school and, until the 1946 Education Act, at its earlier existence as a fee-paying secondary school.

Malcolm Peaker [1954-62]