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'Bully' Lennon's pop fame ignored by his old school
The Independent
|September 21, 2025
A school desk once used by John Lennon, and reportedly hidden away because teachers considered him a “nuisance”, has been unearthed from an attic and will now go on public display.
The item, discovered at Quarry Bank School in Liverpool, is set to become a centrepiece at the Liverpool Beatles Museum. The desk, from what is now The Calderstones School, will be exhibited alongside other artefacts from the legendary musician's schooldays, including the enrolment ledger recording Lennon's details after he passed his 11-plus, signed by his aunt Mimi Smith.
Tom Barry, a design and technology teacher at the school, confirmed longstanding rumours about the desk's existence.
He explained: “The story is that the headmaster, Bill Pobjoy, when John had made some sort of fame with The Beatles, we think in about 1963 or 1964, he asked the caretaker, known as Yozzer, to unscrew John's old school desk from the history room and put it into storage.”
This story is from the September 21, 2025 edition of The Independent.
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