In 1707 a charity school was established in accordance with the notions of those days, in which 30 boys and 20 girls were instructed, and were also clothed in an uniform at the expense of the charity, but were not lodged or fed, except by a dinner on Sundays to secure their attendance at church. This object was attained by applying for subscriptions, and it was then that the Royal bounty which the schools have up to the present received was first granted, Queen Anne granting £50 a-year, and Prince George of Denmark her husband, £30 a-year. The next step was to amalgamate the free school with the new charity school which took place in 1709, and in 1711 the old schoolhouse on the premises formerly occupied by the “Catherine Wheel” public house was pulled down and a new one erected, and was first used in August, 1712. The subscriptions collected for the building were more than sufficient for the purpose, as were also those for the carrying on the school, and the surplus was from time to time invested, first in East India bonds, and afterwards in South Sea annuities.
Thomas Smith, and his son in 1721, left a house adjoining the school premises in trust for the habitation of a schoolmaster.
In 1732 the Rev. Dr. Millington, the then Vicar of Kensington, devised one-third of the rent of some land at Acton to trustees for the use of the Charity School; and some other small gifts were from time to time made to the charity.
In 1769 a Mrs. Randolph bequeathed, or gave in her lifetime, a sum of £275 to the schools, which appears to have been invested in South Sea Stock.
Another benefactor to the parish was Mr. John Farmer, who died on the 9th November, 1803, bequeathing his portrait to the schoolhouse, in the modern representative of which it still hangs, and assists the school committee in their labours by beaming upon them from the wall of the school committee room, and a sum of £500, together with the proceeds of the sale of his household furniture and pictures, saving the aforesaid portrait. The furniture produced £400, making Mr. Farmer’s, benefaction amount in money to £900, and the whole appears to have been invested in South Sea Stock.
At the date of the report of 1810, to which I have frequently alluded, the property of the charity consisted of the school premises, occupying an important site in the main road, two sums of South Sea stock, amounting to £2,275 and £925 each, the Royal bounty, five-eighths of the rent of the “Goat” public-house, and the rent of the land at Acton given by Dr. Millington. And the committee recommended that some children be boarded and longed as well as educated, and that more be educated, and that the title be changed from “Charity School” to that of “Free School.”
The school premises erected in 1712 by means of the subscriptions to which allusion was just now made, was long one of the glories of Kensington. It was designed by Sir John Vanbrugh, the constructor of Blenheim Palace, and the fashionable architect of his time. Sir John was also known as a great and successful courtier, as well as a dramatic author and poet of somewhat doubtful reputation. Many of us are in a position to criticise from memory one at least of his works, viz., the front of these Kensington National Schools, which stood until removed to make way for the new Town Hall. There were figures of a charity boy and girl in the costume of the period decorating the front. Sir John Vanbrugh seems to have satisfied the taste not only of his own but of some succeeding generations with this building, for Faulkner, writing in 1820, speaks of it in terms of high praise, and makes a boast of Kensington possessing it, but I must confess I personally never admired it, and am far from regretting its destruction.
Following on the recommendation of the committee of 1810, the charity was reconstructed. New schoolrooms were built, still behind Sir John’s front, which were first opened in June, 1818, on the National system of education which had been first established in the parish in 1809. In August, 1819, according to Faulkner, there were 140 boys and 100 girls in the school, the whole of whom were taught by one master and one mistress, without any assistants. Mark that, ye moderns! 70 girls were clothed, but only 12 boys. The children were all day scholars, the hours of attendance being from 9 to 12, and 2 to 5 on week-days, and on Sundays twice to church.
I now come to the more modern history of the Charity. The older parishioners will remember the time when Archdeacon Sinclair was Vicar, and the interest he took in the matter of the parish schools. In my search for information on the subject I applied to the Rev. Wm. Wright, now Rector of Sutton, near Sandy, in Bedfordshire, who was for twenty years, from 1855 to 1875, senior Curate of Kensington under the Archdeacon, and who acted as secretary to the schools all that time, and he has been very kind in answering my questions. This is how Mr. Wright describes the schools:—
“In 1855 there was next to the Vestry Hall and Churchyard a large room consisting of four walls, three of which were dead, i.e., skylight.
“The room was divided by masonry and folding doors; on one side was a boys’ school and on the other a girls’ school. The building was hideous in the extreme, internally and externally. Adjoining was a residence for teachers, comfortless and miserable, but with a make-believe frontage to High Street of brick work which was admired by the ‘craft’ and the antiquarians, I should say. Behind this was a wretched schoolroom for infants abutting on Church Court. The whole lot of building save the frontage a miserable affair.
“There was no boarding of children in my time. There was free education, but leave was obtained to make a change subject to a small free list being maintained. As to clothing, there was a partial clothing of some children, but as the uniform of charity was distasteful it was dropped, and the saving thereof thrown into the educational fund of the school.
“The question of new schools arose, and what we did was, first, to buy up the house in Church Court next to the police station, and on the site of it build the girls’ schools. [16] This done, it was after a time rumoured that the adjoining houses were likely to be sold for purposes which would destroy the quiet of the schools. We then, secondly, bought the houses adjoining. Accommodating ourselves to the times, we had to look out for better schools, and the thought struck us that as the wretched room in High Street was a very valuable site for almost any other purpose in the world than a school, we might sell it and with the proceeds build a boys’ and infants’ school on one of the best sites for such a thing, viz., Church Court and on the verge of the closed churchyard. Accordingly we sold the school site in High Street to the Vestry, and with the money so obtained built the boys’ and infants’ schools.
“As to the funds of the school: they were drawn upon to effect the purchase of the close houses, and there were sums of ‘accumulated balances’ which were at the disposal of the trustees for such purpose. Of course when the schools were built the rents of the houses on its site were gone for ever. There were other sources from which help was obtained to aid the cause.”