EDUCATION.
In 1656 Sir Lancelot Lake settled
20 a. at Stanmore marsh on trustees, who were to
pay £15 p.a. to a schoolmaster. In his will, proved in
1680, Lake instructed that a school-house which he
had built should also be settled on trustees. (fn. 70) When
the school lands were let in 1740 for 21 years, the
rent was to rise from £15 to £20 after 11 years.
Further increases enabled the vestry to raise the
schoolmaster's salary in 1777 and 1796. (fn. 71) By 1823
the income was £60 p.a., out of which the master
received £30 and the parish organist £10. (fn. 72) In 1749
the master was allowed to convert part of the 'market
house' beneath the schoolroom for his own use. (fn. 73)
Between 1817 and 1823 nearly £300 was spent on
repairs to the school and the adjoining master's
house, although it was not known whether either
building was the one which had been left by Lake. (fn. 74)
Two masters had their salaries stopped in the
1750s, for refusal to teach a parishioner's child. In
1789 the overseers were ordered to provide books for
all pupils at the free school. (fn. 75) Although any
parishioner might send his children there in 1823,
the master's wife had to be paid for needlework.
Numbers were then reported to have declined to
about 30 following the establishment of a National
school, (fn. 76) although four years previously Lake's free
school was said to have only 21 boys and two girls. (fn. 77)
Some 30 pupils still attended the free school in 1843. (fn. 78)
A charity school for 12 girls was opened in 1710,
after a visitor from Westminster had appealed to the
S.P.C.K. and persuaded his friends to subscribe to it.
Further subscriptions at London, followed by collections at the churches of Great and Little Stanmore
and Edgware, enabled the number of girls to be
raised to 18 in 1711 and 24 in 1712. The pupils were
given clothing in 1713, when 6 boys were added, and
by 1724 the school had 'come to a considerable
bigness', but thereafter nothing is known of it. (fn. 79)
The origin of Little Stanmore National school,
which existed by 1823, (fn. 80) is obscure: in 1819 the free
school was said to be the only one in the parish, (fn. 81)
whereas 7 daily schools were recorded in 1833, only
three of them having started since 1818. (fn. 82) In 1853
Thomas Clutterbuck conveyed a plot in Whitchurch
Lane, west of the police station, for a school which
was to be affiliated to the National Society, (fn. 83) and in
1855 the new building, a single room next to the
mistress's house, was opened. The new school
apparently came to replace Sir Lancelot Lake's free
school. In 1863 there was one mistress, receiving
£60, and an annual income of £78, from an
endowment fund (perhaps created from the sale of
Lake's land) and school pence paid by the 35
pupils. (fn. 84) A parliamentary grant was paid from 1870,
when the average attendance had risen to 64. (fn. 85) In
1884-5 the school, which had accommodated 80
pupils, was enlarged to take 143. (fn. 86) Attendance had
risen to 110 by 1896, when Little Stanmore National
school was amalgamated with Edgware board
school. (fn. 87) Under a Scheme of 1899 Lake's endowment
and the buildings in Whitchurch Lane were consolidated as the charity of Sir Lancelot Lake with the
school of 1853; the premises were to be used as a
Sunday school and otherwise for the benefit of the
parishioners, £15 a year was to be distributed to
local schoolchildren or those at institutes of higher
education, and the remaining income was to be
divided between the buildings or other charitable
causes and the church. By an order of 1905 the £15
was to be provided from £600, which was to be set
aside from the total endowment of £2,337 as Sir
Lancelot Lake's Educational Foundation. The old
school buildings were demolished in 1930 and the
Whitchurch institute was built in Buckingham Road
two years later. (fn. 88)
Camrose school, for juniors and infants, opened in
1931. Of 441 children admitted, 82 were accommodated in St. Lawrence's church hall and the
remainder in a temporary wooden building in
St. David's Drive. (fn. 89) A senior department was opened
as a separate school, Camrose secondary school, in
1932, with accommodation for 560. The number of
juniors and infants rose to 666 in 1935-6 (fn. 90) but was
later reduced on the opening of Stag Lane and
Stanburn schools. A new hall and canteen for
Camrose junior and infants' school were opened in
1964 and there were plans for a new school building
in 1970, when the number of pupils was 214. (fn. 91)
Stag Lane school opened in 1935, in temporary
huts for 450 children, on part of its later site in
Collier Drive. In 1937 the junior and infants'
departments were separated and moved into a
permanent building, holding 484, although the huts
remained in use until four new classrooms were
ready in 1964. In 1970 the land where the huts had
stood was intended for a public library. (fn. 92)
Downer grammar school, named after Thomas
Downer (d. 1502) of Harrow, was opened at the
south end of Shaldon Road in 1952. In 1970 there
were 643 boys and girls on the roll. (fn. 93)
Both the junior and infants' departments of
Aylward school opened in 1952 in Pangbourne
Drive. No additions had been made to the original
buildings by 1970, when there were 220 infants and
330 juniors on the roll. (fn. 94)
In 1942 a prefabricated bungalow accommodating
40 children was built as a day nursery on a bombed
site in Buckingham Road. Since 1946, when it was
taken over as Buckingham nursery school, it has
been the only nursery school provided by the local
authority in Great or Little Stanmore. (fn. 95)
Teaching at the Royal National Orthopaedic
hospital school began in 1923, one year after the
hospital opened its country branch at Brockley Hill.
Responsibility passed in 1948 from the hospital to
the county council and in 1965 to Harrow L.B.
which, with the hospital's board of governors,
appoints the governing body. The school, comprising six wards accommodating 100-110 children,
provides full-time general education until the age of
16 or to advanced level. Adult education has been
provided since 1952. (fn. 96)
In 1851 Edgware House commercial school, near
the White Lion, held more persons than any other
building along the Little Stanmore side of Edgware
Road. The principal was James Earle, who, with an
assistant teacher and a French teacher, had charge of
40 boys aged between 7 and 15. (fn. 97) Miss Euphemia
Miles ran a school at Edgware House from 1910 to
1922. (fn. 98)
The North London Collegiate school acquired
Canons in 1929. Ten years later work began on a
new building adjoining the Georgian house and in
1940 the entire school moved to Canons, where it
has greatly expanded. (fn. 99) Other private schools have
included Mornington school of commerce, a business
training college which occupied a Victorian mansion
south of Stone Grove House at least from 1926 until
1938, and Whitchurch school, in Buckingham Road
in 1937. (fn. 1)