CHEMISTRY LABORATORY  Wiki.JPG)
Cemistry Laboratory, circa 1907.
The Annual Report of 1905 describes the construction that year of a new ‘Chemical Laboratory (25ft x36ft) fitted with the most modern appliances’ This stand-alone brick building was located west of the Main Buildings and south of the cricket pavilion. It was demolished in about 1952.
Bert Keith, writing in
Pegasus in 1965, recounted the following account of student activities in this Chemistry Laboratory. ‘
In pre-electricity days the School was lit by gaslight. The day-boys would make an occasional night raid on the Laboratory and blow down the gas pipe so that the increased pressure extinguished all the lights in the school! After the teachers had restored order and had relit the gas mantles, there was just time to repeat the performance before beating a hasty retreat. Photos of the old Laboratory show a large chimney, which carried away the obnoxious fumes unavoidable in certain experiments. The fume cupboard inside the Laboratory was about three feet square and could be closed by a large door. What better place for an addict of "the weed" (tobacco) to enjoy a quiet "drag"? I think the door of the fume cupboard in the new Laboratory is mainly glass: if it isn't, we haven't learnt much from experience, or else Mr. Henderson must have been blissfully ignorant of the influence of environment upon his charges of those earlier days’.
Sources: (Anecdote- Prob. B. R. Keith) Pegasus June 1961 p 19; Annual Report, 1905.