Time Capsule

On Tuesday 18th November 2008, builders working on re-modeling the reception and the main school office discovered a copper and brass cylinder behind the original foundation stone. This turned out to be a time capsule buried in March 1936, during the official laying of the foundation stone ceremony. The time capsule contained a number of documents about our school, under its original name, the Holt School.

Our head teacher Mr D. Philips, came up with the idea of getting some of our keen Historians involved in constructing a new time capsule about life at Childwall Sport College in 2009. Miss L. Smith of the History Department, planned and managed what was to go into the capsule and selected a group of Gifted and Talented pupils from Years 7 and 9 to work on collecting information and writing articles about our school and city, to put in the capsule. Mr M. Langley of the Design Technology Department constructed the time capsule container and its protective casing to preserve the capsule underground.

In the capsule, pupils decided to include, information about our school and our city. Pupils wrote an article about Liverpool’s year as Capital of Culture and we included a mini Lambanana in the capsule. Pupils wrote articles highlighting the vast array of talent at Childwall, ranging from the Arts to Sports. One budding Historian and a writer for the Childwall Chronicle wrote an article about President Obama’s rise to power and his Inauguration in January 2009.

As Childwall is a Specialist Sports College, which aims to promote healthy living and raise standards of achievement in physical education and sport for all, we felt it was important to share with the people of the future the excellent sporting events which have taken place at Childwall. Therefore, we included photographs from when Childwall played host to an event to publicise and support the 2012 Olympic Games, during which we were visited by Olympic Gymnast Beth Tweddle, Paralympic Swimmer Chris Holmes and Olympic Canoeist Ian Wynne.

Liverpool Football Club and Everton Football Club also made a small contribution to our capsule, contributing signed photographs of the 2009 Liverpool and Everton squads. Liverpool FC also contributed a letter to Childwall Sports College from the players and profile cards providing information about Liverpool’s top players, Steven Gerrard, Jamie Carragher and Fernando Torres.

One of the main items we included in our time capsule was a DVD about how we created our time capsule. Additionally and most importantly, the DVD included footage recorded, when our pupils had the opportunity to meet and interview a group of ex pupils, who attended our school back in 1936. One of our special visotrs, Mr. Sharples, was a pupil at the Holt in 1936 when the original time capsule was buried. He answered questions from our pupils about what it was like to live in Liverpool during World War II and subsequently shared his stories of his time as an evacuee during the war. This was an amazing learning experience for those pupils involved, as not only did they get to explore the contents of the 1936 time capsule, our vistors explained the documents and informed pupils how our school had changed since 1936. Mr. Sharples even brought along with him, his original school tie, which he wears in the picture below.

We were honoured to welcome Mr. Sharples and his friends back to Childwall Sports College for the burial of the 2009 time capsule and the original 1936 time capsule, on 28th April 2009. After the time capsule was buried, all staff, pupils and visitors were invited to watch the Year 9 Brazilian Carnival celebrations organized by Miss D. McNally and Miss C. Alecock of the Geography Department. This was a fantastic event, celebrating the work Year 9 pupils had been completing within their Geography lessons.