Old girls so happy at school’s new lease of life

Over the next year, the former all-girls St Helena School in Chesterfield will be transformed into a new University of Derby campus. Former pupils are working with the university to commemorate the building’s proud past. Fiona Stubbs toured the site and met some of the ‘old girls’.

FIONA Stevenson takes a deep breath as the wooden door creaks open and she steps back in time to her schooldays. Despite the peeling paintwork, the uneven parquet floors and patches of damp along some walls, the spirit of St Helena’s as a grammar school remains for Fiona, now a maths teacher at Outwood Academy, Newbold…