Walstock 2025 - The Centenary Edition

This year’s Walstock was an extraordinary celebration of the whole Great Walstead community and a fitting finale to mark our centenary. A special, heart-felt thank you to every single member of staff behind the scenes who helped make this occasion such a huge success.

To celebrate Great Walstead’s centenary year, our Walstock Festival returned for 2025, bigger and better than ever before! We warmly welcomed our Old Great Walsteadians to a morning Chapel service before the official opening began. The fields were filled with classic cars for CarFest, vintage games, a giant tipi with a fascinating display from our archives, a delicious BBQ, a huge stage to showcase our incredible musicians and performers, and lots of smiling faces. ‘The Walstock Arms’ certainly saw many happy customers keeping hydrated as the glorious sun shone down.

On stage, our performers took their audience on a journey through each decade with a huge array of iconic hits. From the seniors’ ‘Bugsy’ cast tackling the 1920’s all the way to the present day, with the Chamber Choir rocking their favourite songs in style. Every ensemble were fantastic ambassadors for the school and burst with the absolute joy music brings.

It was soon time for our grand finale. After a successful first outing last year, our Community Orchestra and Choirs returned to perform our Elton John Medley. This year it also included our first parent/staff choir. Willing volunteers of musicians continue to grow in number, and we couldn’t be prouder of every single participant. Thank you for inspiring every pupil to love their music.

Who's Who?

Get to know Graham Grant

Graham Grant is our longest serving member of staff, having joined Great Walstead in November 1977 at the age of 17.

Graham works as part of our maintenance team, and gardening is his specialist subject!

What is your favourite place at Great Walstead? The rose pergola at the front of school, where I can often be seen tending to the flowerbeds. My favourite flowers are the montbretia, with their stunning orange petals.

What is your favourite memory from your time at Great Walstead? In 1981 we had a whole school street party at the front of school to celebrate the wedding of Prince Charles and Lady Diana Spencer. It was also my 21^st birthday that day and the whole school sang Happy Birthday to me and presented me with a lovely, big birthday cake!

What is your favourite school lunch? It has to be the chicken curry, followed by apple crumble and custard for pudding. Delicious!

Now and then: Graham planted this fir tree many years ago and look how much it has grown! Look out for its giant cones in the autumn!

Centenary Celebrations

The sun shone on our Centenary Celebrations as we marked the 100th birthday of Great Walstead School.

Our pupils followed a very special timetable giving them a flavour of life back in 1925. From classrooms with chalkboards and desks all in straight rows, rifle shooting (with lasers, rather than shot), boxing lessons, a vintage-style Sports Day as well as learning the Charleston. At break time they entertained themselves with traditional games such as hopscotch, spinning tops and some rather adventurous skipping challenges. We were lucky enough to be joined by Hugh Lowries, who was not only a pupil, but also teacher and then the headmaster of Great Walstead (1991-2006). The children were brimming with questions for Mr Lowries about his time here.

All in all, it was a fabulous celebration of a hundred years of our wonderful school and here's to the next!

Giving Day

A huge thank you for our first ever Giving Day!

Thank you and congratulations to all our swimmers who did an incredible job on Giving Day by swimming a combined total of 4,564 lengths which equates to 67.5 km, just over the distance to France and back! This included pupils in Reception all the way up to Year 8 and, of course some of our staff, making it a real community effort.

Thank you also to our Year 8 pupils who raised £672.35 at their enterprise stalls at the summer fair. Some great ideas and initiatives!

Your generous donations have helped us to raise a total £25,434.27 which will go towards our swimming pool renovations and our Burbidge bursary fund. Our Giving Day is not just about raising money, but is also about creating a sense of inclusive community spirit. My thanks to all of you for your support.

Summer Term Sport

In June we hosted an Art Exhibition to celebrate the official opening of the Art Room here at Great Walstead. Illustrator Christian Birmingham marked the event with a wonderful speech about how art spaces can inspire young students. He has kindly donated three of his prints, which will be displayed around school for all to enjoy. This event was a chance to celebrate all of the spectacular artwork that the children have produced throughout the year and appreciate how talented our young artists are. Well done everyone and thank you to everyone who came.

Art

In June we hosted an Art Exhibition to celebrate the official opening of the Art Room here at Great Walstead. Illustrator Christian Birmingham marked the event with a wonderful speech about how art spaces can inspire young students. He has kindly donated three of his prints, which will be displayed around school for all to enjoy. This event was a chance to celebrate all of the spectacular artwork that the children have produced throughout the year and appreciate how talented our young artists are. Well done everyone and thank you to everyone who came.

News from FOGWA

It was a delight to see so many children bobbing away at the disco that kicked off the summer term events. Not long after that we had a very busy cake stall at Walstock, heavily stocked with some wonderful baked treats from families. In May, we unveiled the new wooden stage in the Pre Prep playground and were beautifully sung to by excited and grateful children. Our Bags of Support collection weighed in at 240kg and is providing aid in schools and communities in Nkuringo, Uganda. The final big event of the year for us was the Summer Party which always brings lots of excitement, challenge and laughter. A huge thank you to everyone that helped plan, prepare, set up, run and pack away, as well as to our generous raffle donors.

Thank you to our wonderful Class Reps for their support this past year, and a special shout out to the FOGWA team, without whom our events simply could not have gone ahead. If you would like to get involved with FOGWA, please email gwfogwa@gmail.com. We would love to hear from you!

Year 7 En France

The Year 7 trip to France was unforgettable! Pupils challenged themselves with high ropes, kayaking, and wall climbing. They also did aeroball and archery—so much fun! One day, the boys and girls made bread using only French instructions, which really tested their language skills. We visited the stunning Mont Saint Michel and explored a lively French market. Everyone spoke French, tried snails, and had a great French evening in our outfits. It was a wonderful trip full of adventure, learning, and laughter.