CHECK out this surly mob. There’s not a smiling face amongst them and with good reason.

The year is 1910 and colour has yet to be invented.

In fact, the world would pretty much remain a black-and-white affair until four lads named John, Paul, George, and Ringo found a yellow submarine in the 1960s.

Just imagine how miserable you’d feel living in a permanently monochrome world?

And then perhaps you’ll have a little empathy with the scowling bruisers in this picture.

It is of course pupils and teachers from King Henry VIII Grammar School, which is now the site of the Melville Theatre.

Recalling his time at the Pen-y-Pound site, local historian Alfred Jackson wrote, “With justifiable pride, I entered the old school. It seemed huge to me, very cold, only one large coal fire, dimly lit with naked gas burners, There was very strict behaviour, and discipline, frequent punishment, but not as severe as it had been early in the nineteenth century.”

Although a school is fundamentally a building, it’s also a state of mind, and experience and a memory.

Wether you spent your time ducking and diving through a series of detentions or were a triple A scholar, school days have a habit of getting under your skin and staying there.

It may now have yet another brand new building to call its own but as an institute of learning KHS is one of the oldest schools in Britain.

The tale of a school named after a merry monarch who had a habit of killing his wives began with the Reformation of the 1530s.

As the monasteries were forced to shut up shop and their great wealth slowly found its way into the coffers of the Tudor King, Henry thought it would be a good idea to splash a little of the cash on some good causes to ease his conscience and maybe nip any bad feeling that could lead to a French style revolution in the bud.

Using tithes previously belonging to the Benedictine priory and specifically, the tithes of Badgeworth in Gloucestershire, Abergavenny had a new school!

With St Mary’s becoming the town’s new parish church, the school also had a ready-made building to move into - the redundant church of St John’s.

Although it was called King Henry VII Free Grammar School, don’t be deceived, it was anything but. There was no groundbreaking movement to provide universal education in Abergavenny back in the day.

It just meant that there was no selection criteria and as as long as you could pay the tuition fess you could guarantee your child a place.

The school founded in 1542 initially had 26 pupils and catered only for boys aged between 7 and 14. It started at 6am and ended at 5pm, and pupils were expected to study a fine mix of logic, rhetoric, arithmetic, music, poetry and astronomy.

In 1887 change was in the air. Not only did the school sever its a centuries old links with Jesus College but in June of that year a foundation stone was laid at a site in Pen-y-Pound for the new King Henry VIII Grammar School.

in 1963 King Henry VIII Boys’ Grammar School was amalgamated with the Girls’ Intermediate High School and a new secondary modern was built on the old Hereford Road.

In 2025 a super school replaced the secondary modern on the same site and the rest is history waiting to be made.

Class dismissed.