ON A snowy Sunday afternoon in 1963, Keighley’s Roman Catholic mayor, Alderman T Gallagher, is cutting the first sod for a new Catholic secondary school off Spring Gardens Lane. Appropriately the date was January 13, the Feast of the Holy Family.

Among the watching group are mayoress Mrs Gallagher, Canon Francis Holdright of St Anne’s Church, and Father Patrick Croad, the mayor’s chaplain. The ceremony included the dedication of the site.

The Holy Family School was built to replace St Anne’s as a secondary school, also serving former junior pupils from St Joseph’s at Ingrow, and from Skipton. Originally meant to accommodate 540, its estimated cost was £262,000, though in the event this rose to £300,000.

Alderman Gallagher presented the headmistress of St Anne’s with a personal gift in the shape of a tapestry from Palestine, showing the Holy Family, to be hung in the new school on its completion.

The photograph has been supplied by former deputy head Sean Gilligan, who acknowledges Canon Holdright as “the guiding hand behind the new school”.