One thing we’ve been struck by when running our current programme in Bexley, South East London, is how many of our older volunteers have lived in the area for a very long time.

In the last 50, 70, or in one case 90 years in the same place they have seen a lot of change, as the country villages of their childhood have merged into a solid block of developed, suburban London. But there is also continuity with the past, as we discovered in a surprising way during one of our sessions.

One resident in her 90s was describing an early memory of school. ‘I remember we were all told to empty out our desks, and then we were marched up the road carrying our things to the new school building. That’s your school now of course’.

The children were delighted at the idea that this lady, one of the oldest in the room, had once gone to the same school as them, on the same site. The name has changed over that time, but we discovered several residents in the room had attended the school, and even remembered particular teachers and well-known characters, covering much of the last 80 years. Several had also had children who attended the school, including the volunteer who had taken part in the move to the newly built site in the 1940s.

She’s now moved a few hundred metres down the road from the house where she was born, into the sheltered housing scheme we visit. It was great to see her meeting the next generation of pupils at the school and hear a lively discussion about what had changed at the school since then and what had stayed the same.