What's the building like?

Hopefully you'll have been to St. Julie's before, either on one of our Open Nights or as part of a visit with your Primary School to do an activity.

Whether you've been before or not, one thing that will immediately strike you is that St. Julie's is really big, and probably much, much bigger than the school you're at now. We're lucky to have well over seventy classrooms spread across five floors and five buildings, and in between them all we have lots of lovely green space.

In the photo above you can see all of the main site. You can't see all of the tennis courts and you can't see our Vocational Centre across the road, but we have them! What's really nice is that the woods at the top of the picture belong to the school as well, so we get visits from lots of birds, squirrels and even the occasional fox who all live nearby.

With such a big site you might be worried about getting lost. You don't need to worry, because if you do get lost you won't stay lost for long!

When you start you'll be given a printed timetable which tells you who will be teaching you and in which room for all thirty lessons that you have in a week. You normally have lessons for the same subject in the same room, so that means in your first year you only need to learn to find about ten or twelve rooms.

The room codes give you a useful clue about where rooms are. If you have a lesson in room S32 then you know that the S means the room is in the Science Building, the 3 means it's on the third floor and the 2 means it's the second room.

Some of our rooms are named after people, like the Edward Hennessy Art Block, named after one of our hard working Governors, and the Sister Dorothy Stang Theatre. Sister Dorothy Stang was a Sister of Notre Dame who did lots of work in Brazil, and became a martyr in 2005 when she was shot and killed by members of a criminal gang. We named our theatre in honour of her sacrifice.

In the first few days we'll have people walking with you to help you find your way, but after that if you're not quite sure where you are or which way you need to go there are over a thousand people that you can ask for help! You can politely ask any staff member or any other pupil in the school for help and they will be very happy to guide you.

Any of our pupils or staff members will tell you that the building is a little bit confusing at first but you learn your way around very, very quickly.