I started off my Saturday morning with a time trip backwards: to the distant days when Albany Primary School was stripped of its students and transformed into a military hospital, for the leagues of wounded soldiers returned from the front during WWI.
As I entered the building it became readily apparent that the school had once again undergone a similar transformation; though under distinctly more tragic circumstances, and with less of an educational bent.
Groups of students, dressed in era-appropriate costumes, were leading the tours, which took us first around the classrooms that had once been hospital wards - with black and white photographs as proof - then to another, where the students had made impressive replicas of trenches, utilising the most ordinary of objects - I even spotted some Shreddies incorporated into one!
Perhaps the most impressive classroom was the one decked out with full WWI regalia, with a few willing students decked out in bandages and lying prone on the beds, or supporting themselves with vintage clutches, or sat in the wheelchair.
I was then guided into the hall, where the low wooden school benches - used then and used now - were pointed out to me, as was the outline of the morgue in the playground. Many photographs of that era were on display throughout the school, and in the one below you can see the very same playground.
Several stalls were also set up in the hall, with activities that offered students the opportunity to 'write a postcard home from the front', or to read the logbooks of the school's history, dated from 1914 onwards.
I chatted to Susan Edwards, manning this stall (courtesy of Glamorgan Archives), who pointed out to me that the log books show the school was turned into a hospital as early in the war as August 1914: 'They must have known they were walking into a bloodbath.'
Despite the generally jovial atmosphere thrumming throughout the school and students (I noticed a sand-pit in the corridor to 'create your own trench') the overwhelming tragedy of WWI had not been forgotten either, by the students or staff. I spent a long time studying the poetry, thoughts, and art students had created, from the perspective of the soldiers and medical staff who had endured WWI, all of which were poignant and moving.
Oh, and before I left, I made sure to snap a picture of the staff - who were by no means let off the dressing up. As it should be, guys.
-Rebecca
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