No 45 under wraps!

 The library cupola, which surmounts a complicated and highly sophisticated series of internal air vents, receives an update

A bird's eye view of Fox House - the boys' boarding House, under refurbishment

More views of the scaffolding as windows are replaced

Window repairs to Bootham frontage

KITCHEN GARDEN COMES TO LIFE

No. 43 is now fully occupied providing a new ‘Lodge’ on the ground floor, or Health Lodge’ as it’s been named, offices on floors one and two, and caretaker’s accommodation on the third floor. Peter Webster, Deputy Bursar, and now OIC Bootham’s new “Kitchen Garden” activity, has masterminded the transformation of the courtyard of No. 43 into a flowers and produce enterprise. There’ll be a greenhouse for seedlings and tomatoes, plus raised beds and trellacing for flowers, fruit and vegetables.

43 Courtyard garden

Left to Right: Peter Webster, Bridget Morris, Gary Neary and Jane Peake admiring the first footings of the flower and produce activity!

Peter Webster checks the latest gardening tips with Ian Dixon and Rob Webster who have helped create the new Bootham School gardening activity

Peter Webster plants the first of the new vegetable crop with help from Rob Webster and Ian Dixon.

If you would like to get involved, either by making a contribution
or offering a donation in kind, please get in touch with us:

trust@boothamschool.com

Building on our History
Clcik here to view this pdf to see the full brochure

For details of the history of our buildings, click here

For details of our Historic Building sponsorship programme, please click here.

BUILDINGS UPDATE - SUMMER 2009

Summer holidays and the builders take over! All the windows around the playground are being replaced or repaired

Scaffolding round the main classroom block as all the windows are replaced or repaired

Some of the brickwork repairs along the Bootham frontage

The portico cornicing on No.51 Bootham

Click here to see a Yorkshire Post newspaper feature article and video on the restoration work.

The Recital Room still has the skeletal remains of the dividing walls – but already we can see what potential there is in this newly discovered room.

Recital Room interior pictured above and below

Lower Schoolroom trying out the ‘ballroom’

FOCUS ON FOX

The big push through the summer will focus on Fox House, with boys’ boarding (Nos. 53 through to 59), the new kitchens and refurbishing the dining room, and the front of No. 51 and No. 45. The history of these buildings has been put together as an outdoor display, to inform residents and visitors about their heritage. These display boards will shroud the ground floor scaffolding along Bootham and the costs have been met by the contractors, Simpsons of York, with support form architects Lawrence Hannah. The cost of all this vital restoration work is being met by a combination of modest revenue-generated surpluses, revenue-funded borrowing, and donations.

Fox house under wraps from No.59 and onwards along Bootham

Project manager, Stuart Wakefield, with Jonathan Taylor, inspect the new information boards which have been installed along the front of the building works along Bootham

TELEPHONE CAMPAIGN

This summer we will be mounting a telephone campaign to contact Old Scholars. This is part of our fundraising effort, but it also aims to extend and revive contacts among Bootham Old Scholars, particularly those who have not been in touch for some time. We will be employing a team of recent leavers to help us.

Finally, there is much to be done with our buildings, but that is as nothing compared with the perennial effort to allow more children to benefit from Bootham’s Quaker education through bursary provision. Bursary fundraising continues undaunted; the need never goes away- if this is something which you would like to be part of, please let us know.

Rob Webster, with fellow Bootham Estate team members Bob Dixon, joiner, and Howard Cooper, decorator, at work on the observatory roof repair. Bob Dixon has hand carved this scroll from specially seasoned lime wood; one of four he's been repairing which adorn the observatory/chemistry roof.