FORMER pupils of Ashleigh Primary School in Darwen might remember with dread the clanging of the old school bell.

Those memories can be re-lived today when the school opens its doors to celebrate its centenary.

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The school admitted the town’s youngsters 100 years ago and until it switched from secondary to primary in the mid-1970s, the old school bell was a noise that haunted class after class.

Now, after almost 40 years out of action, the old bell, blackened with some 60 years of daily use but as loud as ever, has resurfaced and will be on show for people to see – and hear – today.

It will shortly be passed on to local history group Darwen Days to add to their growing collection of Darwen memorabilia.

But first, Dave and Marie Owen, who run Darwen Days and its vast collection of old photos, loaned it to headteacher Ian Matthews to demonstrate to some of his young pupils how noisy life used to be in the old days.

They weren’t impressed and preferred the more sedate whistle system!

Phil Calvey, now in his mid-60s, remembers it well. He said: “It must have been the loudest bell ever used in a school anywhere.

“It would have been more at home on an ocean liner or on top of an old fire engine. Our ears were still ringing after we had taken our seats.” The bell was discovered among the papers of the late Bill Alder, the last headteacher of what had been known as Spring Bank Secondary School.

He moved to Darwen Vale in the early 1970s when the Spring Bank building became the new Ashleigh Primary School, which had been based close by at charming Ashleigh, a big rambling old house off Cyprus Street.

Mr Alder had been deputy head of Brownlow Fold Boys’ Secondary Modern School in Bolton before moving to Darwen in 1956 on his appointment as head of Sudell Road Boys’ Secondary Modern School. He took over at Spring Bank in the mid-1960s.

He retired in 1976, and son David, who now lives at Bentham, came across the bell while sorting out more of his father’s papers and memorabilia from a lifetime in education.

Dave Owen said: “It is amazing what turns up from the old days and everyone seems more than happy to pass it on to us. It is wonderful.”