EDUCATION
In 1583, when Thomas Browne was rector, his assistant
John James was described as curate and schoolmaster
(ludimagister). (fn. 8) A house for the parish clerk and a
schoolhouse were built by Richard Ward, rector
1585-1615, at his own expense and with a donation by
Richard Fletcher, bishop of London (d. 1596), who lived
nearby. (fn. 9) 'Our poor schoolmaster' was buried in 1608
and a schoolmaster was also recorded in 1656. (fn. 10) The
churchwardens provided clothing and schooling for a
boy from 1686 until 1688 and similarly for a girl in
1691-2; presumably both pupils were orphans, paid for
separately as extra charges on the parish school. (fn. 11) 'Bell,
the schoolmaster' paid poor rates in 1695. (fn. 12) The writer
Edward Chamberlaine (d. 1703) was said to have paid
£5 a year to apprentice one Chelsea boy to a waterman
and to have intended to settle that sum. His son John
accordingly settled a £10 rent charge on a house in
Church Lane, half to the master of the charity school to
teach five boys and half to apprentice one every year. (fn. 13)
The same schoolhouse presumably remained in use until
replaced by one built by William Petyt, keeper of records
in the Tower, in 1706. (fn. 14)
Petyt's or the boys' charity school offered parishioners
the only free education until the foundation of a girls'
charity school by the rector Sloane Elsmere in 1740, (fn. 15)
although a school for the daughters of in-pensioners at
the Royal Hospital was founded in 1729 by the authoress
Mary Astell (d. 1731) and others. (fn. 16) Both the boys'
charity school and the Hospital school benefited from
church collections until Elsmere, seeing the pensioners
as a national responsibility, decided that their share
should go to the girls' charity school. (fn. 17) Many bequests
were made to the boys' and girls' schools, although often
without effect. Voluntary contributions provided most
of the funds in 1786, augmented by Chamberlaine's rent
charge and the income from stock worth £455 8s. 4d.
representing seven charities; £200 had come from
Stephen Fox in 1772 and £115 8s. 4d. from Sloane
Elsmere. (fn. 18)
A charity school adjoining Knightsbridge's Holy
Trinity chapel from c. 1785 may have taken some Chelsea
children, since the hamlet of Knightsbridge lay partly in
Chelsea and was included with it in returns of 1819. (fn. 1)
Sunday schools were established in 1787 and later consolidated with a 'knitting school' opened in the same year. (fn. 2)
Schoolrooms were added to the workhouse, for boys in
1792 and for girls in 1822. (fn. 3) The Royal Military Asylum
school, opened in 1803 and included in many returns,
was not parochial. A day school, later known as Ranelagh
Lancasterian or British, existed from 1802, a Roman
Catholic charity school probably from 1811, and a new
British school from c. 1812. The first National school,
Park chapel, originated in a Sunday school of 1814. (fn. 4) The
poor of Chelsea and Knightsbridge were said not to be
without the means of education in 1819, when Petyt's
school had 105 pupils, two National schools (presumably
Park chapel boys' and girls') together had 150-200, and
numerous unspecified dissenting schools over 400; small
day and evening schools were 'numberless'. (fn. 5)
Figure 64:
Petyt School, Church Street, built in 1708 next to the parish church
By 1833 Chelsea had ten day schools that were free or
partly free, (fn. 6) including a School of Discipline (fn. 7) founded in
1825 and the Hospital's, the Asylum's, the workhouses',
and industrial schools. Thirty-one day schools charged
fees; at least 15 had been founded in or since 1820 and
probably none had more than 30 pupils. (fn. 8) Another 12
private schools were partly boarding and included seven
which had been founded in or since 1825. In addition, St
Luke's parochial schools had been opened in 1824
superseding Petyt's and the girls' charity schools.
Together with another Anglican (Holy Trinity) and two
Roman Catholic schools, they were classified separately
as being both day and Sunday schools. There were also
eight Sunday schools, two of them Anglican, and 19
private schools, presumably small, whose owners
refused to answer 'inquisitorial' questions.
Schools were founded for the new Anglican churches: (fn. 9)
for St Jude's in 1837, Christ Church in 1843, St Saviour's
in 1847, and St Simon's in 1852. The first two were
among those by 1847 in union with the National
Society, which also noted a girls' and infants' school in
the Rectory garden and stressed the need to serve the
poorest boys in the neighbourhood. (fn. 10) The opening in
1841 of St Mark's and Whitelands teacher training
colleges was followed by that of their practising schools,
which, too, were National. Both a day and an evening
ragged school existed by 1849. Chelsea poor law union
was annexed to North Surrey school district in 1849 and
pauper children were sent to Anerley in Upper Norwood
from 1850 until Chelsea joined Kensington in 1876 in a
new district, for which cottage homes were built at
Banstead (Surrey). (fn. 11) Roman Catholic expansion
included the foundation of Brompton Oratory school,
in Chelsea from 1856, and was cited as a danger by
Anglican clergy in 1845 and 1863. (fn. 12) In 1861 Chelsea
union was said to have 46 public day schools with 6,215
pupils, and 91 private day schools with 2,224, besides an
unknown number of Roman Catholic schools. Ten
evening schools had a total of 515 pupils and 37 Sunday
schools had 5,361. (fn. 13)
Parliamentary grants were paid to Holy Trinity, St
Jude's, and Christ Church schools by 1846 and to St
Luke's parochial and St Mark's practising schools by
1850. In 1859-60 grants were also paid to St Saviour's,
to the School of Discipline, to a female home, and to
three Roman Catholic Schools. (fn. 14) By 1868 the most
recent National school, St Simon's, had been added to
the list, although Roman Catholics had removed St
Joseph's from inspection. (fn. 15) In 1871 the four wards of
Chelsea together had 11,530 school places, 9,110 pupils
enrolled, and an average attendance of 6,919; in addition night schools had 561 enrolled and an average
attendance of 275. The total of 26 public schools
receiving government grants was reached by counting
separate departments (fn. 16) and by including St John's,
Kensal Green, in Chelsea detached, besides three
non-parochial military schools (those of the Royal Military Asylum and, at Chelsea barracks, for the
Coldstream and Scots Fusilier Guards). (fn. 17) A further 13
schools ranked as private, including industrial and
ragged schools offering a free education, and 30 as
small (private) adventure schools. (fn. 1)
Under the Education Act, 1870, the London school
board's Chelsea division included the detached part of
the parish besides Kensington, Hammersmith, and
Fulham. The division, with offices in Kensington and
later in Hammersmith, (fn. 2) returned four members of the
board until 1882 and five thereafter. (fn. 3) In 1872 it was
suggested that Chelsea needed 4,900 new places, partly
because general use could not be made of the unfilled
accommodation at the military schools. (fn. 4) The divisional
board had hired nine temporary premises and closed
eight of them by 1885, six of them being in the recently
developed Chelsea detached. (fn. 5) The main part of the
parish, already comparatively well supplied, was given
only four permanent board schools. (fn. 6) Chelsea detached
by c. 1890 had three new board schools, Kensington ten,
chiefly in the northern part, Hammersmith 11, and
Fulham 20. (fn. 7) Some children from the workhouse,
presumably temporary inmates, were educated locally:
in 1884 the board threatened to exclude them from Park
Walk school unless the guardians paid the fees. (fn. 8) A
Scheme of 1888 allowed the apprenticing part of
Chamberlaine's charity to be spent on the technical
education in Westminster of boys from Chelsea's
elementary schools. (fn. 9)
By 1903, when the school population of Chelsea MB
was 12,716, the board schools had accommodation for
6,077 and a total average attendance of 4,719. Three of
the permanent schools had separate departments for
boys, girls, and infants. A fourth school, the more
recently founded Ashburnham, had two departments
and was higher grade. In addition there was a temporary
single department school in Walton Street. Although
most of the small private establishments had closed,
denominational education still flourished. St Saviour's
had made way for Walton Street board school, but there
remained 15 Anglican or Roman Catholic schools, four
of them being branches of the Oratory. Together the
non-provided schools could accommodate 4,631 and
had an average attendance of 3,499. (fn. 10)
The LCC's education committee, which succeeded
the school board in 1904, (fn. 11) opened a temporary school
in Hortensia Road in 1907, replaced by one in Tadema
Road in 1913. (fn. 12) The borough council vainly protested at
the choice of Hortensia Road, claiming that many children from Fulham and Kensington were already accommodated in Chelsea, notably at the nearby
Ashburnham. (fn. 13) Also in Hortensia Road were secondary
schools for girls and boys respectively (later Carlyle and
Sloane schools), originating in a day school at the
South-West London (later Chelsea) polytechnic but
transferred to the LCC. Although the LCC had opened
17 secondary schools by 1908, its Hortensia Road girls'
school was the first to be built for the purpose. (fn. 14)
Apart from Carlyle and Sloane, which were often
listed separately, there were by 1919 six county schools,
including Tadema Road and counting the Ashburnham
as separate all-age and central schools; six schools were
Roman Catholic, including the Oratory's four (two of
them central), and four were Anglican. All, except
Tadema Road, survived in 1938, (fn. 15) although provision
was reduced in line with the population. The council's
elementary schools had accommodation for 5,525 in
1920 and 4,913 in 1937, non-provided schools for 3,342
in 1920 and 2,936 in 1937. For secondary education the
number of places was raised slightly to 830 (536 of them
free) by the enlargement of Carlyle school in 1937. (fn. 16)
The Second World War brought the closure of St
Luke's parochial schools. (fn. 17) In 1947 there were six county
and eight voluntary schools, including the Servites'
which shared LCC premises and was soon to move to the
Kensington side of Fulham Road. (fn. 18) The assets of the
former Anglican schools of St Jude, St Luke, and St
Simon were vested in the London Diocesan Board of
Education in 1948 for disposal, as in 1968 were those of
St Saviour's, which had been retained for educational
purposes after its closure. (fn. 19) Public primary education
was provided by three county and five voluntary schools
in 1952 and 1958, while secondary education was
provided by four of each class in 1952 and three in 1958.
The Oratory's continuance as four separate establishments perhaps exaggerated the role of the Roman Catholics, although the departure of St Mark's practising
school for Fulham left them with all three of the voluntary schools. (fn. 20)
The London Government Act, 1963, united
Kensington and Chelsea with Hammersmith (later
Hammersmith and Fulham) to form division 1 of the
new ILEA. (fn. 1) Reorganization on comprehensive lines with
the availability of larger sites outside the old parish
further reduced the number of Chelsea's schools.
Primary education was still provided by three county
and four voluntary schools, the Oratory junior and
infants' schools having united, but by 1975
amalgamations had left only one ILEA secondary school,
Chelsea, and the departure of the Oratory senior schools
had left one voluntary secondary, St Thomas More. (fn. 2)
Under the Education Reform Act, 1988, the ILEA was
superseded by Kensington and Chelsea LB. In 1991 the
new education authority's Chelsea district, corresponding with the old parish, contained 1,307 of the
borough's 6,531 primary pupils. (fn. 3) In 1995 it still had
three county and four voluntary primary schools, two
being Roman Catholic and two Church of England.
There was an open-air nursery school in Glebe Place, in
addition to nursery classes at all the county and one of
the Roman Catholic schools. St Thomas More remained
the sole secondary school. (fn. 4)