A GROUP of former Fitzmaurice Grammar School pupils met in Bradford on Avon last Friday afternoon to reunite with friends from 50 years ago and reminisce over their old school days.

The class of 1969 met at the Mount Pleasant social club and chatted over tea, coffee and browsed through old school photos, magazines and records from when they pupils themselves.

Some of the group even came from overseas to take part in the reunion.

Former head boy Tony Walker said: “My wife and I came over from New Zealand for this as it is 50 years since we went to school and it is quite special really.

“There is a lot of people who haven't seen each other for so long so it is quite hard to recognise everyone, but that is why we made our name tags.

“It has been really nice to reminisce and everyone has gone digging in their archives to find all this memorabilia.”

Pat Miles was one of the former pupils who helped to arrange getting the group together for the reunion.

He said: “We just quite casually thought that since it has been 50 years since we finished that we should have a reunion, but at that point we didn't have many contacts.

“I have only really kept in contact with two or three people but I managed to get in touch with a couple of other people and it just spread really.

“We have been trying to arrange it and get people together for the past six months and there was three of us that did the organising.

“Between us we hoped to get maybe up to 20 people here, and sadly a few people have died over the years.

“We managed to get photos of the old Fitzmaurice Grammar School and some old magazines which everyone has found very interesting to read.”