Pupils and staff will be returning to schools this week after the summer break with understandable anxieties over the ongoing Covid-19 crisis and amidst confusion over exam results.

However, the community of Hexham should also be reminded of what will have been lost at Queen Elizabeth High School over the last six months, particularly as boastful voices will grow ever louder around the opening of the new build school.

For the historic and much-loved walled garden is no more: destroyed as part of the new school construction project, along with some 100 healthy mature trees.

Some history: the 155-year-old walled garden was originally the kitchen garden for the old Hydropathic Spa, an institution visited by such celebrities of their day as Charlie Chapin and Douglas Fairbanks Jr. Towards the end of the twentieth century, however, it had largely fallen into disrepair, but over two decades inspirational hard work had seen it lovingly and painstakingly restored by a dedicated team at the school.

Pupils were given the opportunity to study for qualifications there (some indeed going on to start their own gardening businesses or pursue further qualifications) and the wonderful space also provided a unique environment for one-off educational activities to take place. (It was certainly a favourite of the late and much missed Rev. Alan Currie.)

And now it has been destroyed.

It should be made clear that initially, staff at the high school were told that every effort to keep it would be asked of architects submitting plans for tender.

When these plans were submitted, however, which plan was chosen? One that simply demolished it.

It is hard not to draw the conclusion that there was never really any serious intention of keeping it at all - and its proposed replacement by an area of a ‘natural oasis’ is simply window-dressing to placate critics.

The loss is, of course, simply irreparable. A cavalier attitude to your own school’s history and, along with it, the destruction of a natural resource at a time of increasing worldwide concerns over the environment – and the benefits for mental and physical health and well-being of such spaces – cannot be allowed to go without comment.

Shame upon all the trustees, governors and management of QEHS who allowed this to happen.

Peter Scaife (QEHS 2009-2020)

Morpeth