News, sport and entertainment from the Bournemouth Echo and Dorset Echo.

Patchwork to remember school by

From the Echo, first published Thursday 30th Jun 2005.

A PATCHWORK party will mark the end of 150 years of education in a village school. The Milton Abbas base of the Dunbury School will close its doors for the last time in July.

But teacher Miranda Dodd is positive that they will go out on a high - celebrating the achievements and gathering old friends together.

Pupils, teachers, parents, governors, staff, friends - anyone who has had anything to do with the school in the past or present is invited to the party.

Everyone will make a square to commemorate some aspect of their link with the school - fabric paints and crayons as well as threads and collage materials will be available.

And if people would rather make squares at home they can collect 20 cm blank squares from the school.

The finished work will be blessed at the end-of-year service in St James' Church and will be hung there as a permanent reminder of the school which gave so many generations a good start in life.

"Sadly Milton Abbas has to close but we want to make sure we have a fitting celebration of all the years of education," Mrs Dodd said. "We wanted to produce a patchwork with lots of people doing squares and the party will be a nice opportunity for lots of people to see old friends.

"We hope the patchwork will be very varied, bright and colourful and capture a lot of the memories of what people have appreciated about the school.

"We're not going to cut off contact with Milton Abbas.

"It may be the end of the school building but it's not the end of the school's commitment to Milton Abbas - we still feel very strongly that it's part of Dunbury."

The children will now go to Winterborne Stickland and Whitechurch - depending on their ages - and there are no redundancies among the teaching staff who will work in the other bases of the federated school.

Please call 01258 881536 if you would like to attend the party which takes place from 4pm till 6.30pm on July 8.

First published: Jun 30, 2005

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