It was a long time coming but I was finally able to head north to Humberside and visit the main Marist house in this country in Hull. And a fine house it is too.

This is where the remaining official archives of St Mary’s, Sidcup are held and I was able to trace the history of St Mary’s College, St Mary’s Grammar and St Mary’s and St Joseph’s through the twentieth century.

My host was Fr Des Hanrahan, the much-loved priest who first arrived in Sidcup in 1976 as a young, red-haired Physics master who also taught Electronics A-Level.

It was a pleasure to meet the rest of the community too – Frs Peter Corcoran, Tony Ward, Gerard Burns, Michael Simison and Brother John McAllister.

Fr Simison taught at Sidcup in the early 1980s.

The archives proved extremely useful and contained a wealth of material going right back to the early part of the twentieth century which have enabled me to establish important dates and glean interesting details on both a micro and macro level about the school in the course of its history.

I think we can safely assume now that certain items of potential historical interest have been lost in the sands of time. The first being those old framed photographs of school plays that used to adorn the walls of the famous old staircase.

I have acquired many of these photographs through other means but was interested to know whether the frames still existed.

The other was the book of rugby results that Fr J P ‘Spud’ Murphy used to collate every Monday morning and was, apparently, kept in the library.

Nevertheless, no research can ever be completely exhaustive and, thanks to my visit and the gentlemen that allowed it, I have more than enough to be getting on with.