Welcome!

If you haven’t been back to your old school for a few years, you’ll certainly notice more than a few changes. Most of the old dirt playgrounds, tar roads, cement paths, “lusolite” roofs and metal, corrugated walkways have now been replaced with natural materials, wood, clay, stone and natural plant-life. Every tree at school has been individually identified and treated according to its needs; the Headmaster’s Garden is being been restored to its old splendour, electricity pylons have been removed and cabling moved to underground channels and flowers now abound throughout the school.

The palácio is the same of course (can’t mess much with listed buildings fortunately) but the patio has now been totally repaved with traditional Portuguese “calçada” while underneath it we have recently and finally installed modern sewage and drainage systems (replacing the 250 year old system that was never intended to daily receive the efforts of over 1,000 people!), underground town-gas pipes and electricity and telecommunications cabling ducts (to allow us to remove, in Summer of 2008, the ugly cabling visible on the external walls. Do you remember the days when teachers parked their cars in the patio? Does anyone out there have photos?

St. Julian’s is also a far greener place today than ever before. We have sunk several wells to become self-sufficient and negotiated much better rates for local piped water. As a result we have been able to install irrigation in several areas throughout the school so that the grounds are now prettier and make a far more enjoyable and inviting environment for today’s students to learn and grow up in.

Today, the old palácio hides a modern and forward-looking school. Who would have guessed that St. Julian’s would become the home of the exclusive football academy in Portugal for Arsenal Football Club? Who could have predicted that we would now be enjoying wireless Internet, Cable TV and interactive classroom teaching.

COME BACK for a visit or sign on for one of the alumni events that we are aiming to organize. There are St. Julian’s alumni chapters being set up in both London (c/o Tiago Mateus) and Portugal (c/o Marcos Lagoa) and we’re looking for someone to set one up in the USA, or indeed elsewhere, wherever our former students or teachers live and wherever you would like to get together. We hope this new website will go some of the way to bringing you all together with your old friends again and even open some doors to making new ones!

Welcome back!

Ormond

Ormond Fannon
School Business Manager
Executive Director for Resource Development