Keighley Library recently received a donation amounting to over 36 boxes of photos, records and plans from the former Greenhead High School.

The origins of the school date back to the earliest Free Grammar School established for boys in 1713, as a result of an endowment of a house and garden with land by local man John Drake. It had 50 free scholars for English reading, Latin and Greek. However, Greenhead’s origins lay in the division of the Grammar foundation into Girls’ and Boys’ when Greenhead follows the Girls’ school branch of development. The Girls’ Grammar School, only established in 1872, stayed in the old Drake & Tonson School building in Strawberry Street but moved to Utley, Greenhead Road in 1934, hence Greenhead Grammar. The school became co-educational and a comprehensive in 1966 when the first boys arrived.

This collection is a wonderful record of the development of education through the decades, from school work displays, trips and drama productions to fashion in uniforms and hairstyles shown in the many photographs of staff and students. Today Greenhead is the University Academy, Keighley, a large multi-cultural school with many facilities unimaginable in 1872.

If anyone would like to view the collection, please quote catalogue BK 613 and give 24 hours’ notice.

This photograph shows the Festival of Britain school trip in 1951.