Kitbridge Middle School is remembered as a lively, character-filled place where friendships, trips and stories thrived, despite its unusual position between a slaughterhouse and a prison.
The school on Forest Road opened on 19th July 1967 as Parkhurst County Junior School, later becoming Kitbridge Middle School during the Isle of Wight’s three-tier education era. By the 1970s and 1980s it was firmly established as a Newport middle school, taking pupils through the years between junior and high school.
Unusually, the site sat between a working slaughterhouse and Albany Prison, a setting that sounds harsher in retrospect than it felt at the time. For pupils, it was simply part of the landscape, accepted without much comment and rarely questioned, woven into the background of everyday school life rather than defining it.
What former pupils remember first is rarely the building. It is the experiences.
Trips away from the Island loom large in memory. Pupils recall journeys to the Isle of Arran and repeated visits to Wales, specifically Llanbrynmair, where long days were filled with outdoor activities that pushed many well beyond their comfort zones.
“I remember going potholing and crying the whole way round the caves.”
“Letter boxing, kayaking, abseiling, walking for miles.”
There were also trips further afield, including Paris, which for many marked a first experience of travelling abroad and staying away from home, and are remembered with a mixture of excitement and exhaustion.
Teachers sit at the heart of almost every recollection. Mr Pinkard is often mentioned, remembered as entertaining, unconventional and endlessly engaging in the classroom.
“Mr Pinkard was an amazing teacher. He always let us bring in CDs and told stories that kept everyone listening.”
Some of those stories became part of Kitbridge folklore, retold and embellished over time.
“He told stories about a shark fisherman in Cornwall who lost a leg. Some pupils later swore he’d said it happened to him.”
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Other teachers left very different impressions. Mr Smart is remembered with a mixture of awe and fear. A former RAF pilot who had lost both legs, he was said to have flown during the Battle of Britain and was known for strict discipline.
“He could throw a wooden blackboard rubber with incredible accuracy.”
Leadership in the earlier years is also remembered clearly. Mr Heath, headmaster during the 1970s, is recalled as a large, sharply dressed man who ran extra reading lessons from an office that smelt of cigarettes and coffee, with his wife working as the school secretary. Mr Elliott, the science teacher, earned lasting fame for a party trick involving playing the trombone using a science beaker and tubing, a moment few pupils ever forgot.
Life at Kitbridge extended well beyond the classroom. Cross-country running through Parkhurst Forest is one of the most frequently recalled experiences, though not always fondly.
“In sleet, through mud, my legs were blue and I was frozen solid.”
Others found their own pleasures.
“I loved cross country through Parkhurst Forest for the blackberry picking, not the exercise.”
The school’s surroundings occasionally forced themselves into the day. In the 1970s, the slaughterhouse behind the school could make its presence felt.
“Every now and again, if the wind was right, you’d get a waft of death.”
Even so, former pupils often remark on how it was simply accepted as normal at the time, rarely discussed and never a defining feature of school life.
More dramatic scenes unfolded across the road. Some pupils recall looking out of classroom windows and seeing rioting inmates on the roof of Albany Prison, an extraordinary sight that left a deep impression and quickly became playground legend.
Kitbridge also experienced a moment of genuine shock in 1982, when an arson attack caused more than £15,000 worth of damage and forced the school to close a day early. One classroom was severely damaged, others were ransacked, televisions and tape recorders were destroyed, books and furniture were scattered, and school trophies were smashed. For many, arriving to see the aftermath was unforgettable.
Despite moments of disruption and strangeness, what dominates memory is affection.
“Everyone loved Mrs Wheeler. I used to wish all the teachers could have been like her.”
“This place gave me memories I’ll never forget.”
Kitbridge’s life as a middle school came to an end as part of the Isle of Wight’s wider education reorganisation. After a period operating alongside Downside Middle School across two sites, the Forest Road campus closed to middle school pupils in 2011. The site continued in education use, becoming Hunnyhill Primary School.
For those who passed through it, Kitbridge Middle School remains vivid: a place of unforgettable teachers, exhausting trips, strange sights, moments of fear and laughter, and stories still told decades later.
Did you attend Kitbridge Middle School? Which teachers, trips or moments still stand out in your memory?
I’m in the picture of the kids in Arran , not saying which one though, but I’m dressed in orange ! I do remember when the library was built, we had to put a time capsule in the foundations nearly 50 years ago
Mrs Jardine I remember she always wore jesus sand
les and no tights
Oh crumbs, I remember that, I had totally forgotten the sandlex and no tights
I didn’t really know Kitbridge Middle School, apart from visiting it once in the late 1970s(?) while Mr Heath was still there — he had been my class teacher at the old Parkhurst Juniors in Albany Road, which (including the Infants School) I attended 1952-1958. But the field itself in which Kitbridge was built was extremely familiar to me in my childhood — we played football in its mud after traipsing the short distance from Parkhurst Juniors, and we kids in the neighbourhood (I lived in Whitesmith Road) used it in the warmer months as our playground — in those days it also had the fascination of the Military Cemetery next door! It was also where, in the summer of 1957, I learnt to ride a full-sized pushbike without once falling off, no doubt with the distant squealing of pigs being slaughtered in the background! Long may the present-day Hunny Hill school thrive there — however distant it may now be from Hunny Hill itself.