| Kettering Grammar School | |
|---|---|
| Location | |
 | |
| , , NN15 6PH | |
| Coordinates | 52°23′19″N0°42′39″W / 52.3887°N 0.7108°W |
| Information | |
| Type | Grammar school |
| Closed | 1976 (completely in 1993) |
| Local authority | Northamptonshire |
| Gender | Boys |
| Age | 11to 18 |
| Publication | The Cytringanian |
| Website | http://www.cytringanians.co.uk |
Kettering Grammar School was a boys' grammar school (selective) that had a number of homes in Kettering, Northamptonshire throughout its history.
The school was based in a building in Gold Street which, together with the master's house, was completed in 1857. [1] It then relocated to Bowling Green Road, a building designed by John Alfred Gotch in the neoclassical style and completed in 1913. The building was occupied on the left side by Kettering High School (for girls) and on the right side by Kettering Grammar School (for boys). [2]
After the school moved to Windmill Avenue, to the east of the town north of Wicksteed Park, in 1965, [3] the Bowling Green Road building became the Kettering Municipal Offices. [4]
In later years the Windmill Avenue buildings housed Kettering Boys School, with many of the same teachers as the Grammar School but no longer selective, and now part of the area's Comprehensive education system. It operated on two sites - a lower and upper school. The Kettering High School became Kettering School for Girls on Lewis Road (near Wicksteed Park) and then Southfield School for Girls on Lewis Road. [5]
The Windmill Avenue site has been occupied by Tresham College of Further and Higher Education, (Kettering Campus), [6] since 1993. The former Grammar School buildings were knocked down in 2007 to make way for the Tresham's new block. [7]
In the 1960s, Geoffrey Perry, head of the school Physics department experimented with using satellite signals and the Doppler effect as an aid to teaching. The activity soon grew into regular monitoring of Soviet launched satellites and expanded into an international collaboration that became known as the Kettering Group. The group was headed by Perry, who by then had become Head of Science Teaching. On the technical front Perry was partnered by the head of the chemistry department, Derek Slater - a Radio Amateur, G3FOZ. [8]
The activities of Perry and his team created considerable interest: an article which had been published in Aviation Week magazine in 1957 had revealed that the U.S. had been tracking Russian missile launches from advanced long-range radar units in Turkey. The article caused a furore, with President Dwight D. Eisenhower's special assistant for National Security Affairs, Robert Cutler, referring to the article as "treasonable". It was claimed that the story started out with Perry and his students and that Perry had advised a writer at the magazine that a radar in Turkey was doing important space intel tracking, so the writer dug deeper into the story. A Kettering contribution to the 1957 story would not have been possible at the time because the tracking team was not formed until 1964 and its analyses of the Soviet space programme only started to appear a couple years later. [9]
In 1966 the project went international when Swedish student Sven Grahn contacted the group with a recording of the signals from Kosmos 104. [10] [11] The same year it discovered Soviet launches from Plesetsk Cosmodrome, officially unacknowledged until 1983. [9]
In 1969, a group used simple radio equipment to monitor the Apollo 11 mission and calculated its orbits. [12] [13] According to the group, in December 1972 a member "pick[ed] up Apollo 17 on its way to the Moon". [14]
In 1973 the group tracked Skylab [15] and in July 1975, the team supported ITN in their coverage of the Soyuz - Apollo link up which took place 140 miles over Bognor Regis on 17 July 1975. [16]
In 1978 the group predicted the crash of Kosmos 954 spacecraft. [17]
In May 1985, Geoffrey Perry talked about the project in the Radio 4 programme The Kettering Project. In March 1987, Channel 4 featured the Group in the programme Sputniks, Bleeps & Mr Perry. [4]
Pictures of the school's space tracking team, originally published in The Times newspaper, would later find their way onto record covers of The Wonder Stuff for their album, Construction for the Modern Idiot . [18]
Northamptonshire is a ceremonial county in the East Midlands of England. It is bordered by Leicestershire, Rutland, and Lincolnshire to the north, Cambridgeshire to the east, Bedfordshire, Buckinghamshire, Oxfordshire to the south, and Warwickshire to the west. Northampton is the largest settlement and the county town.
Plesetsk Cosmodrome is a Russian spaceport located in Mirny, Arkhangelsk Oblast, about 800 km north of Moscow and approximately 200 km south of Arkhangelsk. Originally developed as an ICBM site for the R-7 missile, it also served for numerous satellite launches using the R-7 and other rockets. Its high latitude makes it useful only for certain types of launches, especially the Molniya orbits, so for much of the site's history it functioned as a secondary location, with most orbital launches taking place from Baikonur, in the Kazakh SSR. With the end of the Soviet Union, Baikonur became a foreign territory, and Kazakhstan charged $115 million usage fees annually. Consequently, Plesetsk has seen considerably more activity since the 2000s.
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Wellingborough is a market town and civil parish in the North Northamptonshire unitary authority area of Northamptonshire, England. It is 65 miles (105 km) from London and 11 miles (18 km) from Northampton, and is on the north side of the River Nene.
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Kettering is a market and industrial town in the North Northamptonshire unitary authority area of Northamptonshire, England. It forms a civil parish called Kettering Town. Kettering is located 67 miles (108 km) north of London and 15 miles (24 km) north-east of Northampton, west of the River Ise, a tributary of the River Nene. The name means "the place of Ketter's people ".
Anthony Wayland Wright is a British Labour Party politician and author, who was the Member of Parliament (MP) for Cannock Chase from 1997 to 2010. He was first elected in 1992 for Cannock and Burntwood.
Rothwell is a market town in North Northamptonshire, England. It is close to three larger towns, situated 4 miles [6.4km] northwest of Kettering, 7 miles [11km] southeast of Market Harborough and 8 miles [12.8km] southwest of Corby. Rothwell's nearest railway station is at Kettering on the Midland Main Line.
Zenit was a series of military photoreconnaissance satellites launched by the Soviet Union between 1961 and 1994. To conceal their nature, all flights were given the public Kosmos designation.
Geoffrey E. Perry MBE was a physics teacher at Kettering Grammar School, Northamptonshire, England who, together with his colleague Derek Slater, and students, deduced the existence of the previously-secret Plesetsk Cosmodrome in 1966 by analyzing the orbit of the Kosmos 112 satellite. The New York Times published his discovery shortly before Christmas in 1966.
Barton Seagrave is a large village and civil parish in the North Northamptonshire, England. The village is about 1.5 miles (2.4 km) south-east of Kettering, town centre. The older part of the village is known for its Norman Church and attractive buildings.
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The Carnarvon Tracking Station was an Earth tracking station in Australia, located 10 kilometres south of Carnarvon, Western Australia. It operated from 1963 until 1975, during which it supported the Gemini, Apollo and Skylab space programs.
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Tresham College of Further and Higher Education is a number of further education colleges in the East Midlands of England. Specifically located within Northamptonshire, the main campus is located within the town of Kettering, alongside other campuses included within Corby and Wellingborough. Bedford College and Tresham College merged in 2017 to form the Bedford College Group.
John Alfred Gotch was a noted English architect and architectural historian. His brother was the Pre-Raphaelite painter and illustrator Thomas Cooper Gotch, who painted his portrait. Married to Annie Gotch, one of their sons, Roby Myddleton Gotch was killed in action during the First World War aged 26.
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Charles Wicksteed (1847–1931) was a British engineer, businessman, and entrepreneur. He is best known as a manufacturer of playground equipment and as the founder of Wicksteed Park.
The Municipal Offices is a municipal building in Bowling Green Road in Kettering, Northamptonshire, England. The building is used as an area office for North Northamptonshire Council.