THE STUDYING CONTINUES

About the same time as Barry Smith was starting his research on the pubs of Dover, I was at Dover Grammar School for Boys attempting my "A" levels, after completing my "O" levels and had a term on my hands to take on a "post "O" level project" on photography. For the subject I decided to take some close-up shots of old Dover postcards and engravings from a variety of sources and also start a collection of public houses pictures in walking distance of the school.

The project only lasted a couple of months as the "A" levels started to kick in, but like most of my projects, they all get revived when time allows, hence this web site.

Born in Dover in 1961 I have lived here all my life. First school was at the end of Clarendon Street on Belgrave Hill and was called Belgrave Infants School. I was there until the age of 7 when I moved to the Old St. Mary's school, now demolished and housed by what was the White Cliffs Experience. I still spend plenty of time near the same land in what is now the Dover reference library. The Old St. Mary's was pulled down to reveal the Roman ruins and I moved to the new St. Mary's school buildings just off Maison Dieu Road.

1972 saw me pass my 11-plus and I was accepted at the Dover Grammar School for Boys, where I seem to have spent half my life. After my "O" and "A" levels I decided not to go off to university but to get a job, and was lucky enough to be offered a job as workshop technician at the same Grammar school. I stayed there, gaining more qualifications at Dover and Ashford technical college. During the 90s I took on the reprographics department as well as that of workshop technician and slowly started to teach in the workshops a few lessons to begin with but eventually relinquished my technician and printed roll and taught full-time as (non qualified) teacher of C.D.T. (Craft Design Technology). This entailed woodwork, metalwork, including skilled machining on lathes, milling machines and shaping machines, casting in non ferrous metals, plastic work and a fair bit of design. At my time of teaching with non qualified status I decided this was the life for me and I eventually started my degree on the Open University in Computing.

Unfortunately in 2005 the Grammar School decided as I was non qualified they would demote me to status of technician again, but unfortunately as my reprographics post had been taken and at the time the workshops were being closed I was offered to post as Music Technician. This I declined and moved to Archers Court College of Maths and Computing, where I took the post as Workshop technician again.

I was determined that this post wouldn't last long, mainly due to the very poor wages, and luckily a teaching colleague I worked with was continually off sick and I showed my talent by stepping into his shoes and started teaching again.

I am still at Archers Court, teaching Graphics and Resistant Materials (they keep changing the names of metal and woodwork for some reason) as well as keeping the workshops up to standard as technician, but as soon as I graduate at the end of 2009, I will be gaining those necessary qualification and should be back teaching full time again.

Although no longer at Dover Grammar, I still take an active part in the school and I am membership secretary for the Old Pharosians Association (Old Boys) and maintain their website at www.DoverGrammar.co.uk. That also contains a fair bit of research and dedication.

I take an active part in playing table tennis, currently for River in the Folkestone division. I also play skittles for the Dover Harbour Board, I have owned and look after Sundance (shown above since he was 6, (he's now 30, 2009), and I dabble in painting animal pictures. I am still continuing with my degree studies, and of course any spare time you'll find me researching into the pubs of Dover and District.

The research may sound like a lot of time drinking, but that's probably only about 2% of the time. 40% is spent in in the library and on various internet sites that may give the history of the area and pubs I am researching, and the remaining 58% spent putting this web site together.

This website, is of course a never ending timeline of research and it never fails to amaze me when I think there could possibly be no more pubs in the area when another one pops up.

Paul Skelton (18 February 2009)