PREP SHOCK

How surprising it was to get a tip-off that the closure of the Brigg Preparatory School site was about to be announced. The handy hint proved to be a very good one, and we soon received the official statement to confirm what we'd been told was going to happen.
The Prep School announcement seemed to come out of the blue to all our elected representatives - and shock news it was, too.
It is going to be a great loss to the town, and pupils having to be transported daily to Hull for lessons at a partner school will pose obvious difficulties for families.
Certainly, as Coun Tom Glossop has rightly said, the absence of Prep pupils in Brigg, next March, is potentially damaging for the annual Music and Drama Festival, in which the School plays a very important part.
Now I've never been on the Prep School premises, as far as I can remember. Not even while working for the Lincolnshire Times at 57 Wrawby Street.
And, having been raised on a Brigg council estate (nothing wrong with that!) I was never of the social class to hanker after a place at 'The Prep' back in the 1960s, even if the money had been available.
Later, at Brigg Grammar, the few of us from Brigg County Primary who got through the dreaded 11-Plus were teamed up with many others who had been to Brigg's private school. Maybe going to Prep gave them a head start, maybe not. We got on OK, and whether your house had an outside 'lav' across the yard or one inside a centrally-heated detached home in an affluent area of town was never a topic of playground conversation. Nor was what your dad did for a living, as far as I can recall.
But returning to the present, come January it won't seem the same driving, or walking, down Bigby Street and passing the school standing empty.
The Prep is a fine, distinctive building, and thoughts will now turn to what might happen to it, once pupils and staff have gone.
No doubt that will be revealed in due course. But if it involves 'change of use' we can be sure of some warning as that will have to be made public.
We will be keeping an eye on the latest planning applications, as always, and will let you know if anything interesting arises.