Tresham College Farewell (Corby George Street Campus)

This isn’t your normal ‘report’ on somederp it’s just a quick post for posterity and historical interest on the passing ofTresham College (Corby) George Street Campus.By the time you read this the building will have been reduced to rubble after standing in the town for 60 years.It was nothing to look at architecturally and if people were honest it was a tired eyesore of past times. I watched it close and I watched theTellytubbysecca each night as he fed his face with takeaways while scanning the CCTV in his hut before the demo team moved onto site. The place was so lame I didn’t bother exploring it (not my bag really) but it deserves a few words as it breathes its last…Some cut ‘n’ paste history from the Internets
Portions of text Copyright © 2011 – Olivia Morton (Tresham College of Further and Higher Education)

Corby Technical College opened on September 16th 1940, to 21 students and was called JTS. JTS developed from a small number of workshops to Corby Technical College where expansion at the college led to more buildings in George Street and Rockingham Road.

The site, now used by Tresham, opened as Corby Technical College’s engineering department on September 16th 1957.

Mr AJ Price was the principal at the time and remained to see the college develop and introduce the building department on September 11th 1958, the commercial department on September 10, 1959 and finally the science department, which moved to the premises on September 8th 1960.

The George Street campus was officially opened on October 20th 1961, by Sir John Cockroft. On January 11th 1978, the merger of Corby and Kettering Technical Colleges was announced and was renamed as Tresham College.

In September 2011 Tresham College moved to a new £36m premises in Oakley Road.

6th September 1957 (News Article)

First installment of county’s finest technical college is ready
The first step in Corby’s most important educational project yet was made when the initial installment of the new college opened for full time students on Thursday (12th September 1957) followed by day release and evening instruction for other students on Monday September 16th.
Both buildings (including Rockingham Road) saw some 1,100 students registered for the winter term.
The ‘new’ George Street College catered for all engineering provision and the General Certificate of Education. The‘imposing’ three-storey façade was only a quarter of the
intended whole building due for completion three years later, aimed to rank as the finest technical college in the county with accommodation for over 2,000 vocational students. The
college was built in three stages – firstly the engineering block included classrooms, lecture theatre, canteen and staff rooms, engineering workshop, electrical installation workshop and laboratories, electronics, heat engines, hydraulics, strength of materials, metrology.

The second installment, the largest of the three, was to include workshops for bricklaying, carpentry, plumbing, painting and pipe fitting. The third section was a four storey block for the main entrance to the college. The ground floor would provide a large lecture room, common rooms, needlework and other classrooms. In addition it was described
to include the commercial and “women’s departments” for cooking, housecraft and general craft. Behind the four storey block a large assembly hall was planned with its own separate entrance complete with a stage and three dressing rooms, kitchen, dining room and foyer.

11th January 1978 (News Article)
The merger of Kettering and Corby Technical Colleges was approved and to become one college by September 1st 1978 following on the success of the Nene College merger in Northampton. The first step was to find a Principal to run the college by April 1st 1978, whilst the education committee looked for a new and distinctive name to identify the college.
Cllr Lovel Garrett said the merger would improve standards in the north of the county. New courses were likely to be authorised because the new college would be on a higher grade than the two existing colleges.

7th August 1978
The name of the merged Corby and Kettering Technical Colleges was announced as Tresham College. County Education chiefs decided on the new name ready for the new term on September 1st 1978. The amalgamation of the two technical colleges was part of plans to streamline college facilities in the north of the county.
Tresham is a well known Northamptonshire family name which became prominent in the 15th century. Several buildings in the towns served by the new college were either built, designed or owned by members of the Tresham family.
These included Rushton Hall, the Triangular Lodge, the New Building at Lyveden, Manor House at Pilton and there are kneeling figures in the cross of St Faith’s Church at Newton.

In better times
Death Knell

Water Station D200 (self bust)

I’m not sure what I’ve done to upset the cosmic balance in my world but the tides of karma have washed up nothing but trouble for several months now….so far 2012 sucks 🙂
My tripod is still broken (nowatVelbon HQ getting repaired) but we thought we would take a look at a bunch of stuff the other week we had been meaning to do for some time…bunkers, storm drains, culverts, an underground reservoir and a couple of water towers.First on the list was thederpresi but it was soon obvious that the site was very much live after being met with ass ripping8ft palisade and security camera’s…never mind, we cracked on regardless. Sadly the10ft deep reservoir had over5ft of water in both sides and someone was definitely ‘at home’ so to speak. Shame really as it was quite a big boy and would have made for some nice shots…time to move on.The Water Tower and Pumping Station were similar in that they looked derp from a distance but the humming of pumps and scattering of CCTV said otherwise. We setup anyway and started shooting, the light was pretty lame and I was packing a shagged tripod but we got on with it, avoiding the camera’s and generally trying not to get pinged. Out of nowhere a white van came speeding towards us, we must have been spotted somehow? It parked right on top of our hiding place and just sat there, there was no way we could have gotten out without being seen as a climb up a very steep bank was the only exit and this would have out us right on the radar and the vehicle could have easily cut us off before we could climb the palisade. There wasn’t really any options as we had lots of other places to go that day and I didn’t fancy sitting there until nightfall just to extract quietly and if we sat there any longer another van would soon be along and we would be proper busted so we went for the unconventional option….take the ‘fight’ to them rather than sit there like mugs.

We strode out of our hiding place and walked straight towards the waiting van, then in an instant I realised something was not right, the driver was sat with his head down, not looking at us (or anything else for that matter), shit, no turning back now, we were in open ground and committed so carried on. At the last second the driver looked up shocked and said “Where the hell did you come from?”
I knew in an instant he wasn’t secca so it was blag time…fast…

“Er, well, I’ll be straight with you mate, we came over the fence cos we like photographing derp stuff, especially water towers, I’ll tell you what, we’ll just vanish and you pretend you never saw us yeah?”
“No mate this isn’t derelict you’re on **** property and if security catch you there’ll be all sorts of bother so yeah, you best disappear (he said, smiling).Although we had effectively busted ourselves for no reason he was cool so we got chatting about some operational details regarding the site before we GTFO and moved onto other stuff on the day’s list.
Not as many shots as I’ve had liked from here but then we did get rudely interrupted 😉