A head still held in high esteem half a century on
Who remembers the former head teacher Alfred John Nelson Fuller?
Well, anyone who ever attended Oldborough Manor School during the 17 years he was in charge there it would seem.
A Facebook group exists for past teachers and students of the school in Boughton Lane, off the Loose Road in Maidstone.
It is called Oldborough
Manor In Memoriam and it is where the group’s 766 members recount the high esteem they had for their head. Alfred Fuller was born in
1906 in Malling. He preferred to be known as John to his contemporaries at Maidstone Grammar School, which he attended between 1917 and 1922 and, where, apart from his academic ability, he was also a keen sportsman and held the school’s 200-yard sprint record for many years. Before arriving at Oldborough, he had been head at Boughton Monchelsea and Snodland Schools, and from 1949 had been head at the new Wrotham Secondary School. When he transferred to open the newly built Oldborough Manor, he took with him from Wrotham Violet Sedgewick and Jake Dixon as his deputies.
The school took its first pupils in 1951, although it wasn’t officially opened by Lord Cornwallis until 1953. In 1965, Mr Fuller was made an OBE in the Queen’s Birthday Honours for his services to education. He was awarded his medal on the same day as The Beatles attended the Palace to receive their MBEs.
One of his achievements was to champion a project to provide the school with a swimming pool. There being no official funding for such a venture, the school held bazaars and fêtes till it had enough cash, with pupils and parents helping to dig out the hole in order to save money.
Former pupil Steve Charlton said: “He did such a great deal, striving to make Oldborough one of the most advanced secondary modern schools of the time.
“Thank you Sir, for doing so much for us in the 50s and 60s - respect is owed to you by many from those times.” Mr Fuller retired from Oldborough in 1968. He died in Southampton in December 1982, aged 76.
In 2007, Oldborough
Manor merged with Senacre Technology College to become the New Line Learning Academy, which opened on the same site but with new buildings.