Our stories of wellwishers raising money for local hospitals prompted one reader to remind us of a series of events her school class organised.
Pupils at Gosford Hill School at Kidlington handed £300 to the cancer unit at the Churchill Hospital at Headington.
In the picture above, Senior Sister Margaret White is seen receiving the cheque in 1985 from, left to right, Claire Wheeler, Sian Jones, Chris Cooper and Robert Williams.
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Form tutor Roy Bateman had suggested that pupils should organise a charity fundraising campaign and those in Form 1B quickly took up the challenge.
They made sweets and cakes and sold them in the junior tuck shop, washed cars belonging to staff, sold books and comics and organised an end-of-term disco.
They also persuaded Mr Bateman to run in a half-marathon and urged family and friends to sponsor him.
Sister White told the pupils when they handed over the cheque that the money would buy a new set of scales to weigh patients.
She explained that drugs for cancer patients were calculated according to body weight, and accurate weighing was essential.
She told the Oxford Mail: “I’m very impressed with their fundraising. They did extremely well and we are delighted to receive the money.”
Another reader remembered the occasion in the lower picture when motorcycle enthusiasts raised money for the Churchill Hospital.
(Image: Oxford Mail) Members of the Oxford Motor Cycle Action Group abandoned their bikes and opted for a more sedate form of transport – a hospital bed.
They pushed it for about two hours from Oxford city centre to Headington collecting money on the way for elderly patients at the hospital.
The bed-pushers who are pictured setting off from Broad Street, raised almost £250 for the hospital.
Ken Wall, Oxfordshire representative of the Motor Cycle Action Group, praised the bed-pushers and said he was pleased with the total they had raised.
The school is being completely rebuilt and this year has been inviting former students to a ‘memories festival’ ahead of its demolition.
It is one of about 400 schools across the country which will shortly be redeveloped as part of the government’s multi-billion-pound School Rebuilding Programme.
Details of the project were published last October by the school and a planning application was submitted to Cherwell District Council in February.
The work is due to start this year but not before students, parents and staff past and present have had a chance to say farewell to the existing school buildings.
The Oxford Road school opened in 1932 and its current headteacher is Nigel Sellars.
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