MANOR PARK GRAMMAR SCHOOL

NUNEATON         1950 - 1977

In keeping with academic tradition, this page is updated (roughly) every term.    Last Updated 27 March 2026   

Contact Us.

Have a particular look at pages 22, 25, 27 and 33 as you browse the sixty-year-old edition below.

75th Anniversary

75 years ago the 125 boys and girls who made up Manor Park Technical School's first 1st years were in the last term of their first year.

The summer term began on 10th April and would see pupils visit the Nuneaton Industries Exhibition, the Science Museum in Kensington, and the Festival of Britain Exhibition in London. They would also take part in Festival of Britain celebrations in the town as well as the inter-schools athletics and swimming competitions.

 Work was in hand to convert room 11 into a science laboratory, while Mr. Goodburn was consulted by the Borough Education Officer on the spending of £25,000 for extensions to the school.  The headmaster also conducted interviews for new members of staff and new pupils for September entry.  He also attended Juvenile Court to give evidence concerning a pupil.

An Open Day was held on 6th July and term ended on 27th.

A sketch of the planned extensions to Manor Park, published in 'the Wheel' No. 17,  Summer 1963, shortly before work on "phase 1", the "Three Storey Lab. Block" began.  The "New Hall" would not be built until 1974, after the school had become comprehensive.  The kitchen, allowing school dinners to be cooked on site, would never be built.

Those of us who were at Manor Park in the sixties saw the area to the right of the main drive become a building site, which grew into the science block. With three floors consisting of six science laboratories as well as classrooms and  a common room for sixth formers, it was by far, the largest extension to the school.  Both the physics and general science laboratories, that had been temporarily housed in workshops either side of the metalwork rooms, moved into the new building.  Biology and Chemistry moved from laboratories on the north side of the quadrangles allowing more space for the library and the staff room. Mr Dunkerley's woodwork room could now move from the 1928 "craft room" (room 9) to occupy one of the vacated workshops, while the other became the art room. Music moved from room 8 to the much more spacious room 9.

Construction reaches the second floor,  Nuneaton Observer  9th October 1964.

When the building came into use in September 1965, for the first time since the technical school opened in 1950, it was possible to teach all lessons in appropriate rooms, rather than some being squeezed into corridors or on the stage, behind the curtains.

Taking less than two months at the end of 2024, together with the 1956 two-floor extension, the science block was reduced to rubble.  It had been unused since Manor Park School closed in 2010.

The area that had been dominated by the three storey block for sixty years looks strangely empty in 2025 awaiting the expected redevelopment for housing.

During the early stages of the demolition of the science block in November 2024, the locomotive wheel which had stood in two or three locations outside "the extensions", since, at least 1963, was removed by Manor Park Rugby Club to their home ground at Griff & Coton Sports Club, where it has been sand-blasted, painted in club colours and is displayed on its own plinth.

Manor Park Rugby Club has its origins in Manor Park Old Boys RFC formed in 1958.  With the closure of the grammar school the "Old Boys" was dropped from the title, but the club retains the wheel from the school badge in its own badge and the red and black team colours.

[Photographs Alan Merry and Nik Gajic]

More at   https://www.pitchero.com/clubs/manorpark/a/history-7770.html

If anyone knows where the locomotive wheel came from or exactly when in was installed at the school, please do get in touch.                             

Beaumont Road, September 2025.  Who knew that fence was there?  As usual any information, on this rather obscure piece of Manor Park history, will be gratefully received.  Click here.

Various groups of old scholars meet up (ir)regularly.  Contact us here if you would like to be put in touch

The "Class of '66" group (ie 1st year in Sept 1966 or 6th form 1971) continues to grow with over 50 now in touch and meeting for the occasional lunch. 

Contact us to publicise your event here or to be put in touch with any of these groups or individual old scholars. In the interest of data security we can't send out email addresses etc. but we can, on your request, forward your contact details.

"Great book good work. Love it."

"Great book. Brings back memories of my time there"

"interesting and at times humorous. "

"really enjoying the book can’t put it down"

Following the success of the first edition, some 80 pages of additional stories, memories and photographs have been added to produce
 

'A Short History' 

Second Edition

300 pages, hardback

Available here or at

Nuneaton Heritage Centre

     Not a Third Edition. 

Regular readers of this page will be familiar with our requests for copies of 'the Wheel' to complete our collection.  Of the 29 editions published we have in the archive, all but three, numbers 2, 4 and 5 published around about 1952 - 1955.  Little did the contributors to the school magazine, published roughly every other term, realise that they were recording history, a very useful resource that provided the basis for 'A Short History'

The twenty-six editions that we have have been indexed by author and title, although many pieces were anonymous.  So if you wrote for the magazine, or want to be reminded of articles, which included travel reports, sports reports, house reports, reports on school productions and competitions as well as short stories, poems and opinions, feel free to contact us with whatever details you have and we will return a .pdf file of the appropriate page(s).

Contact Us

Thanks to old scholar Stephen Mills we have added a few items to the Archive, including a copy of the last edition of  'the WHEEL', Issue No.29 from Summer 1972, signed by the cover artist, Al Sage, probably worth about the same as a J K Rowling first edition ?

We began to build the archive some thirteen years ago, shortly after the closure of Manor Park School and when it was possible that all trace of MPGS would rapidly disappear.

Thanks to many old scholars who have contributed press cuttings, photographs and copies of 'the Wheel' as well as personal memories, not only have we been able to produce "A Short History", but we also have an archive of over 600 items.

 WANTED  for loan or donation to the MPGS archives.

Photographs of forms  3D and 4M and the lower sixth taken in April 1957

Any photographs of 2nd, 3rd and 4th year forms taken in September 1950.

'the Wheel'   school magazines nos. 2, 4 and 5  c.1952 -1955

Other items, including copies of 'the Wheel', to build up the archives at the three locations.

Loaned items are returned after scanning, while donated items are placed in one of three archives that hold original documents etc.  See here

Click here to see where original items are stored.

Contact us here

For the first all-school photograph, around 700 pupils, teachers and other staff assembled on the lawn at the front of the school on a September day in 1964, "when one or two lessons were missed".

Facebook and Youtube

                            Facebook page 'Manor Park (Nuneaton) school friends' 

                             In 2020 Milly Millington made a video of the school, past and present,  www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xb2Lebor3U8