Preston Catholic College grammar school opened its doors to its first 11 pupils in 1865; it provided an education to young boys from the city and surrounding areas for more than a century afterwards.

Thousands of students spent their formative years at the institution, until the last cohort entered in the autumn of 1977. For the duration of their secondary school life, these pupils remained the youngest year group in attendance, making their time at the college a highly unusual experience.

In this book, we get to meet those boys almost 50 years later and hear their reminiscences and memories of life as the ‘last intake’. The stories in its pages reveal plenty of common preoccupations and shared highs and lows from the time. But they also provide fascinatingly different perspectives on the teaching the college offered, as well as an illustration of the varied futures its alumni went on to follow when they went their separate ways.

Together, these recollections add up to a wonderful social history of a very particular place, at a very particular time.