"The Little Shop" in Steyning - Virtual shopping for the Holman Family!

Candy Wars.... this time it's LOCAL!

Hello Holmans! I've "Virtualised" "The Little Shop" in the quaint village of Steyning for you.

So.... Caleb, Ben, David, Josh, Faith, Hope, Joy, Patience & Mercy (or Mum)..... here's what you do. Choose 2 types of sweets from the JARS each.

I'll then potter down to the shop, get your order (100g of each choice) and post them off! (That should come in just under the magic 2kg posting weight.)

Joe and Denise (well.... especially Denise) there are some rather nice chocs in the last 4 pictures. Make a choice from some of those and I'll get them sent with a few other things.

There are some of those "Seriously Sour" sweets in there if you want Patience. For those "non-Holmans" reading this Caleb and Patience seem immune to sweets sour enough to turn most people's faces inside out! These are the types of sweets you need to keep in a magnetic containment field rather than a paper bag. I'm seriously impressed guys. You rule the sour battlefield!! (Ben on the other hand.... when he eats one it looks like someone is cutting his leg off with a rusty saw.)

Denise is a chocoholic by the way. (But she does have VERY good taste.)

So.... enter the Ancient Arena of the Sweety Shoppe at your peril and make your choices but remember.... if you are BAD children your dad will change all your requests to "Seriously Sour"!

Demolition Begins!

So..... last time we still had a dining room that looked like this.












Then a whole load of portable site offices and storage rooms arrived on Bennetts playground.

Paths avoiding the way across the playground were laid.... currently a bit of a detour.

Then the "Big Beast" of "Subtle Demolition" arrived. I kept expecting it to "Transform". :-)

At first it pulled down the railings with it's scoop. Made VERY short work of those.

Then they switched to a hydraulic crab of quite awesome power. They literally "peeled" off the roof of the dining room!

This grab can spin continually round. If something resists the initial grab & pull it just spins around until it breaks.

The guy using this was super-skilled. He could pick up individual pipes, as well as massive bundles as here, with the utmost precision.

The building on the right is Wykeham House. one of our Boarding buildings, whilst those on the left are part of the Lower School.

Everything was dumped into huge demolition skips... and then pounded down flat by the grab. As you can imagine... we're not playing much basketball at the moment!

Here we are mostly destroyed. The bit left up has the electrics cupboard in it.... destroy that and all Bennetts + Matron's flat loses power. (Matron Clements described the whole affair as "A series of minor earthquakes!")

You can see the South Downs in the background. That ridge is part of what we call the "Upper Horseshoe". It's a run route I've only ever done twice without stopping. (It just goes up and UP!)

And a testament to precision destruction! Just the electrics cupboard left standing.

Here's a closer look at that grab.

It certainly could lift a whole lot of stuff.

So..... most of the dining room is flat now. Lorries have been taking away the rubble. Once the electrics have been diverted the rest will go. Then I would think they'll start to dig down to the new level and start on the foundations.

The new building will cover the old school swimming pool as well as the dining room. It'll take a year to build but should be great. Single en-suite rooms, computer points, social rooms.... and of course a new dining room. Sick bay will also have a new home, as will the Boarding Offices. I'll see if I can get permission to put the plans on a Blog.

Only a year to wait!! Tim.

The last days of the dining room.

..... or how I learned to love the sound of demolition equipment. But I'm getting ahead of myself.

Here we are in the Steyning Grammar School dining room for our last meal.

Richard Beels has the honour of reading the last "Names" to check that no-one has escaped. ("Names" is one of those old words that has survived through the years. It's clearly about calling a register. Now "Slogs" is an entirely different matter. It's food after school... mostly things left over from main school dinner. Rumour has it that it's an acronym "Supper's Left Over's Grilled". But that's by no means certain.)



Sue Weekes gets to do the last notices in the old building.








Catering manager Trevor is last to leave... Captain, sinking ship and all that.












And here's the room empty prior to demolition.











First of all it was necessary to trim down the old (and I mean OLD!) Mulberry tree so that the site hoardings could go up. (The dining room is in the background.) You can see some of the age on the younger cut branch below.

Later on the remaining tree will be transplanted to behind Bennetts building in the hope that it will survive and thrive there. This tree has produced huge amounts of mulberries in the past... and I like mulberry crumble.





"Demolition begins" follows.... almost at once!



Tim.