My first recollection is of my time in a classroom on the river bank in the Orchard in 1962/3. A single story building, dark and dank, it adjoined a .22 rifle range on one side and the River Brue on the other.

Before the days of the Orchard Block and the damming of the river, the classroom flooded periodically in winter and the classroom had to be abandoned.

In summer when the river was lower, one could look out of a grimy window and watch brilliantly coloured kingfishers at work on the far bank. I hope that the kingfishers are still there - though the building was demolished years ago.

My second recollection is of Mrs Fletcher who ran the tuck shop at the same time. I am somewhere depicted in the contemporaneous photograph that shows the old timber tuck shop being moved by a crane to allow for the construction of the Orchard Block - happily for her Mrs Fletcher was not in the building at the time! It was a regular port of call for the fags who collected iced buns for the senior boys. It may have been 10 years or so later that I was walking up Coombe Hill on a rare visit to Bruton on business when I was hailed by name by Mrs Fletcher, showing her remarkable ability to make people feel at home. I remember her kindness warmly.