THIS week marks the tenth anniversary of the closing of a school in which both staff and pupils were always keen to forge international links, culminating it becoming a specialist language college.

Teenagers from the girls’ and boys’ schools, which made up Woolston Secondary School, regularly enjoyed field trips to various parts of Europe including Germany, Austria and Italy.

In 2003 the school was renamed Woolston School Language College to reflect this passion for overseas cultures.

Earlier on in the school’s history another annexe, Mayfair House in Portsmouth Road, was used during the 1950s for learning support and needlework lessons.

According to school records it was back in 1915 that an educational establishment was first sited on Woolston School’s present Porchester Road site.

At that time it was used as a teacher training centre up until the First World War. During the 1920s the school went through two name changes; Sholing Station Road County School and Southampton Itchen Secondary School. During the Second World War Allied troops were billeted in the school’s humanities corridor before the D-Day landings while the science block was used as makeshift canteen for Vosper Thornycroft shipbuilder workers.

The school – which saw many of its pupils evacuated out of the city – was also used as an Air Raid Patrol station.

In 1945 the school became two single sex secondary modern schools and a ceremony was held in 1949 to unveil a plaque.

In October 1972 the site, sandwiched between Portsmouth Road and Portchester Road was deemed “inadequate for the work of a comprehensive school of this size.” Despite tutoring 640 pupils, it was the smallest school site in Southampton.

At that time proposals were in the pipeline for for a completely new school in the Inkerman Road area in the heart of Woolston.

The long-awaited £3m replacement school never materialised, instead thousands of pounds were spent on refurbishing the site.

in 1957, the school was reorganised as a mixed secondary school. From September 1967 it became a secondary comprehensive school.

Woolston Secondary School closed for good on July 18, 2008, when it merged with Grove Park Business and Enterprise College to become Oasis Academy Mayfield.

The site was used as an annexe for the new school until 2011 and the buildings were torn down to make way for homes last year.