Seymour Hill Primary celebrates 50th anniversary with memorabilia night

The school has been holding a series of events to celebrate the special occasion, including a memorabilia night last Thursday (May 27) when past pupils and staff took a trip down memory lane.

Colonel Robin Charley, on whose land the school is built and whose family crest is the school badge, unveiled a special plaque at the school in honour of the occasion.

Seymour Hill Primary opened in 1959 to replace the old Stevenson School in Dunmurry village. With the building of the Seymour Hill estate and the later Conway and Glenwood estates, a community of 2000 homes was established.

The school had to be extended with four more classrooms and by the 1970s there were over 600 pupils enrolled.

In the last decade the school has evolved as a community facility, offering extended schools with adult classes for parents and grandparents.

The anniversary celebrations began with a staff reunion in Dunmurry Golf Club last year, as well as a school show based on five decades of music and dance. The year of celebration will close with a special Prize Day service involving churches in the community.

Speaking after the recent memorabilia night, Principal Mr Norman Meharry said it was "a truly memorable event with so many past pupils and staff and friends turning up that the queue to enter stretched out of the school grounds."

He went on to say: "Wonderful memories were recounted and stories told so there was no doubt how much a school can come to mean in our lives and Colonel Charley was able to take us back through 300 years of his family's history and links with Seymour Hill.

"The evening was an outstanding success," he concluded.