We couldn’t keep calling our buildings the ‘old’ and the ‘new’ so we felt it was time to have the official opening and to name the buildings.
On Friday 24th March we had our official opening! During the afternoon we had a live feed into the hall from the new entrance lobby and years 1 to 5 watched the proceedings from the hall whilst children in reception and Year 6 congregated within the lobby. We had selected our oldest and youngest girl and boy to be the ones to cut the ribbon and unveil the plaque, so Freddie, Sunjana, William and Jasmine waited patiently whist Mrs Driver explained the names of the buildings and then they dutifully ‘opened’ the building.
Our new extension is called ‘Redwood’ because our classes are all named after trees so we wanted a name connected to that, our school uniform is red and the redwood tree is the tallest tree species in the world. The existing building is called Ransom after the Ransom family.
Once the school had been opened the children all went outside for an afternoon break where SpongeBob Square Pants and Spiderman turned up to find out what was going on! This caused great excitement and it was great to see them out in the sunshine greeting all the children.
To end the proceedings, Mr Ian Hankin, Mrs Funda Shibli and Mrs Catherine McIntosh visited each class and presented every child with a commemorative pin badge. The children were delighted with this and it was a lovely end to the afternoon.
But celebrations weren’t over! That evening about 100 invited guests turned up at school to witness the second opening of the day! People from HCC, Willmott Dixon, the builders, Martindales, the architects, together with current staff and ex-staff, current governors and ex-governors and friends of William Ransom all came together to be able to explore the finished building.
It was wonderful to see so many friends, many of whom had had a hand in helping to create our wonderful new building. Mr Hankin thanked everyone for coming and paid tribute to all the people who had worked so hard in helping get the project off the ground; and before asking Shirley Brown to cut the ribbon and unveil the plaque, Mrs Driver also thanked everyone, especially Mr Hankin, for all their work in creating such a wonderful building.
After that everyone had a chance to explore Redwood and to admire the new facilities.
It was another, really lovely event.
Thank you to everyone who came along and took part in the evening.