BRIGG SCHOOL TURNING BACK THE CLOCK WITH BRICKYARD YARD CROSS-COUNTRY 'FUN RUN'

A Brigg school is to turn back the clock by staging a sporting event that will be very familiar to scores of people educated locally during the second half of the last century.
Sir John Nelthorpe School, which can trace its roots back to 1669, will be staging a cross-country run on Wednesday, November 20, using the original course via Wrawby that was pounded by pupils of Brigg Grammar up to 1976 and (in the years that followed) by those attending the newly-formed comprehensive.
Teacher Jon Taylor has contacted Brigg Blog, asking us to make local people aware that the Fun Run will be taking place on Wednesday.
As part of the 'Our Place in Time' celebrations to celebrate 350 years of education at the school, the PE department is holding the run along the old Brick Yard Lane Course.
"Every year group will take it in turns to run out of the school gate, down Grammar School Road to the Brick Yard Lane entrance and then up towards Wrawby Road and the Wrawby Road school building," Jon adds.
"There will be staff running, and on every road, cheering the students along the 4km route. 
"We are raising money for a number of good causes including Cancer Research, The British Heart Foundation, Lindsey Lodge, Martin House, and Our Place in Time.
"We hope that everyone tries their best and sees the course as a challenge, and that we get maximum participation to contribute to the Our Place in Time celebrations. 
"If you went to Sir John Nelthorpe School in the '70s, '80s and '90s you may have memories to share of the run.
"We have a number of past pupils helping marshal the run, including Bill Eldridge who still holds many of the athletics records.
"If you see the students running past on Wednesday, then please cheer them along."
NF adds: Ex-pupils of Brigg Grammar will remember this course very well, but in "our day" we ran it in the other direction - leaving the school gates, turning left up Grammar School Road (no inner-relief road back then), passing the police station/courthouse and heading left at the Monument roundabout to run down Wrawby Road as far as Brick Yard Lane. We then joined Grammar School Road just beyond the last council house and headed back to school. This course was for young pupils; those with more seniority followed a longer one up St Helen's Road and across the fields to Wrawby before heading back into Brigg. Bill Eldridge was a few years above us at Brigg Grammar in the late 1960s. As Jon rightly says, Bill was a champion, record-setting distance runner. Long-serving PE teacher Gerry Longden often used to set boys off from the school to run the junior course in a lesson. Not fancying the challenge on a cold winter's afternoon, some tried to cheat by short-cutting through Woodbine Avenue and Glebe Road - at walking pace. But they forgot to allow for Brick Yard Lane being muddy and their clean sports kit, particularly footwear, was immediately spotted when they got back to school. In "our day" we didn't see it as a Fun Run!
PICTURED: Sir John Nelthorpe School, Brigg - viewed some years ago - from the air.