1906: Chelmsford County High School for Girls was built.
1907: Officially opened in May; first Headmistress Mabel Vernon-Harcourt. 76 pupils aged 12-18 divided into Forms IIIa, IV and V.
1908: Old Girls’ Society formed by the first girls to graduate from CCHS
1909: First School Magazine.
1910: School Hostel run by Mrs Smylie opens at 39 Broomfield Road, Chelmsford. Pupils living some distance from school could live there during the week. Miss Vernon-Harcourt retires to get married.
1911: Miss Edith Bancroft becomes the second Headmistress.
1914 - 1918: School continues to operate throughout WW1 and takes in Belgian refugee students. Forms have designated "shelters" in areas away from windows or outer walls.
1915: Preparatory Department opens for girls aged 8+.
1916: Attendance rises to 178 pupils. School Hall (which later became the Gym), new classrooms, and domestic science room were opened. School Hostel has to be expanded.
Winifred Picking is the School’s first University success: First Class Degree in Natural Sciences at Cambridge and her name is entered on the School's Rolls of Honour.
1919: Attendance exceeds 300 pupils.
1921: School gets a gramophone
1923: School motto chosen: "Vitai lampada ferimus". The motto is on the school crest (a flaming torch set against the 3 Essex seaxes (Saxon knives)).
1925: Creation of 4 school "Houses" named after School Governors: Chancellor (blue), Hulton (red), Pennefather (green, pronounced “penny- feather”), Tancock (yellow).
1927: School gets a telephone.
1928: First Commemoration Day marks 21 years since official opening; this becomes an annual even held in May.
1931: School Reference Library moves to its new room (now the staffroom). Science Labs built (now the Technology rooms)
1935: Miss Bancroft retires as Headmistress. New Headmistress is Miss Geraldine Cadbury.
1936: Better transport links means School Hostel closes.
1937: Electric school bell installed to mark the end of each class. School gets a wireless radio.
1939-1945: School continued to operate during WW2. Chelmsford suffers numerous air raids due to its engineering companies and CCHS suffers numerous broken windows. Examination candidates get their own air-raid shelter. An Allotment Club is formed.
1947: Preparatory Dept closes.
1950: Science building called Bancroft Wing is completed.
1950s-1960s: Building expansion includes a caretaker's house, swimming pool (at the far end of Bancroft Wing), school hall and canteen (beside and behind the gym) and the library and art block (above the Quad). By 1958 there are almost 600 pupils.
1961: Miss Cadbury retires. Miss Phyllis Pattison becomes Headmistress.
1962: Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth the Queen Mother visits the school.
1964: School swimming pool opens
1970s: Three demountable classrooms (prefabs) are built and named Rooms 23, 24 and 25. Only Room 25 survives (this was my Upper Sixth Form Room and was supposedly due to be demolished in the mid 1980s).
1975: School acquires No 120 Broomfield Road and converts most of it to teaching rooms. Upper Sixth form rooms move into it. There is also an Upper Sixth Common Room.
1976: I join Form 1S.
1978: Dracula Spectacula play.
1979: Miss Pattison retires. There is a school revue with music and short plays put on by the various societies and clubs. Deputy Headmistresses Miss Tyler and Mrs Lorimer perform her duties.
1980: Payphone installed on landing outside rooms 18, 18A and Library
1980: Miss Anne Brooks becomes Headmistress. She employs the school's second ever male teacher, Mr Clark (mathematics), who is related to the German language teacher. Work Experience introduced - after O levels and before start of the summer holiday, those of us staying on to Sixth Form spent 2 weeks with a local company. I spent my work experience at Southend Hospital Pathology Labs.
1981: CCHS fundraising to buy first computers for the school. In the meantime, pupils wishing to study IT do Computing O Level after school at the Chelmer Institute.
1982: First "BBC Micro" computer obtained. Technology Club begins. Woodwork Club begins (too late for me as I was in the middle of A Level studies, otherwise I would have loved this!)
1983: I complete Upper Sixth, leaving after A Levels in summer of this year.
1980s: During the 1980s, CCHS introduces IT, having originally dismissed computers as "vocational" (rather than academic). Nowadays, ICT is part of the curriculum and there are 3 computer rooms plus 3 specialist technology rooms.
1983: My A level year and I finish at CCHS
1984/5: Bottom playing field and asphalt tennis courts lost when Parkway extension (Cedar Avenue to Broomfield village) developed.
1986: School House systems changes to three houses, C (green), H (red), and S (yellow), standing for County/Chelmsford High School. "Computer Week" using borrowed equipment gives all pupils a chance to get "hands on".
1987: Miss S.E. Tyler, deputy head, retired after 29 years of service to the school.
1988: Computer network installed and pupils can use it for word processing and desktop publishing (an about face from the early 1980s when school declined computers on the grounds that they were "glorified typewriters"!) O levels are replaced by GCSEs.
1989: Miss Brooks retires as Headmistress.
1990: Bernice McCabe becomes Headmistress.
1992: CCHS becomes a Grant Maintained school (controlling its own funds) and gets a School Bursar. Visited in March 1992 by Margaret Thatcher and local Conservative Party MP Simon Burns.
1995: Cadbury Science Building opened. Former science building, Bancroft Wing, becomes a languages building.
1996: First year intake increases from 3 to 4 classes. Fourth School House, G (blue) (standing for Grammar) restored as a result (though to my mind it's easier to arrange inter-house contests with 4 Houses).
1997: Ms McCabe retires as Headmistress. Mrs Monica Curtis becomes Headmistress.
1999: School bell decommissioned in the belief it reduced, not improved, punctuality. School gains Foundation Status in place of Grant Maintained Status.
2000: CCHS gets Technology College status.
2001 - 2005: CCHS gets Beacon School status (quite apt as the school crest is a flaming torch!)
2002: CCHS gets Sportsmark Gold for its PE curriculum and for providing out-of-school-hours sports.
2004: Astroturf pitch created.
2005: Sixth Form common room extended with toilets and showers. CCHS gets Music College status. Beacon School scheme is discontinued.
2006: Mrs Curtis retires (ill health); Deputy Head Glynis Howland becomes Acting Headmistress. CCHS gets Language College status
2007: Nicole Chapman becomes Headmistress.
2008: New Music building opens. Built in the shape of an orchestra, it takes up most of the school field (once used for hockey and tennis) behind the school hall. It comprises 2 classrooms, practice rooms and a recording studio inside.
2009: CCHS approved to deliver the International Baccalaureate Programme.
2010: CCHS gets Healthy School status and planning permission for a new Languages Centre and to extend its dining facilities. The Languages Centre will be sited at north end of the school (where Room 25 prefab, my old Upper Sixth Form Room, was)
