WHEN I started at Newport High School in 1947, I remember seeing on waste ground at the side of the school, a pair of wire-spoke aircraft wheels sticking through the ground.


I was told by an older pupil, that these were attached to an aircraft that had belonged to the school air training corp.
At the beginning of the last war it was thought that an enemy plane might see the old plane, think the school was an aircraft factory and bomb it.
So a hole was dug (but not quite deep enough) and the plane was tipped in upside down and the hole filled in. The engine was kept in a crate in the bike-shed for many years.
Later when the ATC had their own hut, the engine was partly sectioned and displayed in the hut, with the two-blade propeller over the door.
In the 1930s the air-force had a lot of obsolete planes and these were given away to ATC groups if they wanted them. So perhaps St Julian’s School had an ATC and that’s how the plane came to be there.
Colin Rowden
Pant Road Newport