Battersea: education in a London parish since 1750

Abstract

This paper examines the development of educational institutions and buildings in one slice of a big city over a long timescale. The city is London and the slice Battersea, an inner suburb of mixed character and volatile fortunes. The narrative explores the shifts and interactions between state and voluntary provision, local community needs and architectural fashion. Though the specifics of the story are naturally unique to the district, it is likely to be representative of the record of other British metropolitan areas during the same years. The paper is constructed in such a way as to draw out these potentially common strands.

Keywords:

• education
• architecture
• administration

Notes

¹ London Magazine, December 1, 2005.

³Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, ‘The Adventure of the Naval Treaty’, in The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes (first published 1893).

²Malcolm Seaborne and Roy Lowe, The English School: Its Architecture and Organization, Vol. 2 1870–1970 (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1977).

⁴An interesting example is 26 Bolingbroke Grove, built in 1875 on the edge of Wandsworth Common as part of an unsuccessful speculation involving the architect of the London board schools, E.R. Robson. Though designed for a private client, this Queen Anne‐style ‘villa’ was very soon converted into a private school and has stayed in educational use to this day. So one of Robson’s few houses in London has almost always been informally used for the purpose for which he designed the vast majority of his buildings.

⁵ Journal of the Society of Arts, August 13, 1870, supplement.

⁶Charles C.F. Greville, A Journal of the Reign of Queen Victoria from 1837 to 1852 (London, 1885), vol. 1, 131, 151.

⁷Frank Smith, The Life and Work of Sir James Kay‐Shuttleworth (London: J. Murray, 1923), 106.

⁸London Metropolitan Archive, Acc.2321/53, June 28, 1894.

⁹National Archives, ED 21/11211.

¹⁰ The Builder, February 21, 1885, p. 288: National Archives, ED21/11232.

¹¹National Archives, ED 21/11212.