Last modified 20 October 2026
The artist's note reads “Parsonage or Manor House adjoining the burial ground of Wandsworth on the road to Clapham / Sketched 23d Augt 1813” — as if Porden wasn’t sure what the building was. I don't know whether it was ever a parsonage (though it later became a Presbytery for Roman Catholic priests, as we shall see), but it certainly wasn’t a Manor House. True, a hundred or so yards away there was a large house often called “Wandsworth Manor House”, and shown as such on several maps (I showed an image of it at the bottom of last month's Chronicles). But that wasn’t a manor house either.
This is how our prodigious local historian Dorian Gerhold described it a few years ago, after he chanced upon the image in the Museum of London Picture Library:
[Porden’s drawing] depicts a seventeenth-century house between East Hill and North Side, just east of the Huguenot Cemetery. Drawn in 1813, it shows the house from North Side…
The high roof and large chimneys suggest seventeenth-century rather than eighteenth-century origins. It is first recorded in a fire insurance policy of 1718, when it belonged to John Bindon of London, citizen and haberdasher. In 1746, it had six wainscotted rooms, five marble chimneypieces and one Portland stone chimneypiece.
The house was described in 1793 as ‘a genteel red brick house’, belonging to Mr Walker. Its main approach was apparently through its garden from East Hill, since its north façade had a pediment and was more symmetrical. The yard south of the house contained a coach house and stables. The house was still standing in 1894, but must have disappeared soon afterwards.
[Dorian Gerhold, “Two Houses in Old Wandsworth”, Wandsworth Historian 77 (Autumn 2003), pp. 10–11. For more on Wandsworth’s old houses, see his Wandsworth Past (1998), pp. 50–57.]
Here's the site today, a rather different house (though still very 18th-century in feel):
So it once stood next to Mount Nod – the “Huguenot Burial Ground” that I featured in August’s Chronicles. In this view, the house is facing south, across Wandsworth Common. But we’re more used to seeing the house from the west side, as in these images:
And another (very similar) view, from 1896:
We can tell it’s the same house in all the views because of the Palladian (aka Venetian) window on the side elevation (right), and the glimpses of headstones (left). This window features in every image.
Initially, I thought this sketch, signed simply “Porden”, was by the more famous William Porden, architect of the Brighton Pavilion’s stables and riding house. But our Porden is his nephew, the architect Charles Ferdinand Porden (1790–1863), who trained under his uncle.
Charles Porden went on to become the architect of St Matthew’s, the great Greek-revival church in the centre of Brixton (built 1822–24). Curiously (or should I say controversially), it was later reincarnated in the 1980s/90s into a late-night restaurant/nightclub venue (home to "Mass", "Babalou" and others) before these closed in 2012. But the church itself never closed — it continues today as the parish of St Matthew with St Jude, alongside a community venue-hire operation.
St Matthew's (built 1822–24) looks quite like our own St Anne's Church, built just two years earlier (1820–22) by Sir Robert Smirke (architect of the British Museum). Both are “Waterloo” or “Commissioners’” churches, built in thanksgiving for the victory over Napoleon at Waterloo. Both are built in a Greek Revival style, with massive columns supporting porticos. Though there are many differences. For example, the tower is over the portico in St Anne's and near the Chancel in St Matthew's. The pillars are Doric in Porden's church, but Ionic in Smirke's. So they're close family, but sisters rather than twins.
Notice the two men in the image:
Uncannily, the two men happen to be standing in exactly the same spot as the figures in Porden’s sketch of 1813. Explain that, if you can.
The house that now stands next to Mount Nod looks to my eye quite old – early 18th century, I might have said. But it's obviously not Porden's house. So when was it built?
In fact, it's only a century old. It’s in the Neo-Georgian or “Wren-naissance” style so popular in the early twentieth century, with classical symmetry, multi-paned sash windows and crisp red brickwork.
It was built in the 1920s as the Presbytery (the priests’ house) of the Roman Catholic church of St Mary Magdalene behind it on East Hill, a much plainer red-brick church built in 1905–06 to designs by Lawrence Butler.
[I've not been inside yet, but I've seen some fine photographs. I'm told that the interior was painted by Father George Fayers, a Salesian priest-artist said to have been a pupil of Sir Edward Burne-Jones. By the way, isn't it a little odd that the name St Mary Magdalene was chosen for the new (Catholic) church, given there was already an established (Anglican) one half-way down Trinity Road? I’ve started a page on the church and its presbytery to gather what I find.]
It has a curious history, given how closely associated this area is with fierce Protestantism. The parish was founded in 1902 by the Salesians – an order founded in Turin by Don Bosco and named after St Francis de Sales – who had arrived in 1887 to work with Battersea's “wild boys”. (But that’s a story for another time, and probably for another to tell.) At first the priests lived in the old house on the site, and even ran their school there. But eventually it had to go.
Perhaps unsurprisingly, while the Catholic St Mary Magdalene was in construction some claimed that Huguenot bones were been disturbed. In August 1906 the Daily News printed this, from “a correspondent,who writes from East-hill, Wandsworth”:
The majority of the inhabitants of Wandsworth are expressing great surprise and indignation at the occupation of that particular part of the borough known as ‘The Huguenots,’ by ecclesiastics of the Roman Catholic Church, and justly so. A rumour is current also that in the process of excavation for the purpose of laying the foundation of their new church, bones of the honoured Huguenots have been disturbed! Who is responsible for this state of affairs?
A week later came a crisp reply from a Mr Jas. A. Rochford. The digging had been done twelve months before, he said, in the garden of a private house, separated from the “disused cemetery” by a thick party wall:
I watched the work in operation almost daily. During its progress no encroachment whatever was made on the cemetery, and no “bones of honoured Huguenots,” or of any other dead, were disturbed. Had there been any such disturbance our numerous keen-eyed friends around us would quickly have raised the cry by which it is now sought to bring odium on the Catholics.
Daily News, 11 August 1906.
Here's the complete reply:
The Bones of the Huguenots
Last Saturday we inserted a letter from a Wandsworth correspondent who referred to a rumour that the bones of the Huguenots had been disturbed by the excavators who prepared the foundations for the new Catholic church. We have pleasure in giving the following reply from Mr. Jas. A. Rochford, which puts a different complexion on the matter:
The particular part of the Borough of Wandsworth known as “The Huguenots” is not occupied by ecclesiastics of the Roman Catholic Church. Hence it is incomprehensible why “the majority of the inhabitants are justly expressing great surprise and indignation” at its “occupation” by them. The fine old property known by this name is at present untenanted, and that owned by the Church is and has been private property since the days of Queen Anne.
It is, however, the connection between this mis-statement and the next sentence, viz., the “rumour” to which your imaginative correspondent gives currency which shows an endeavour to stir up ill-feeling against the Catholic community here, and to which the strongest exception must be taken.
“The process of excavation for the purpose of laying the foundation of their new church” took place some twelve months ago. The garden of the private house in which the new church is now erected was separated from an adjoining disused cemetery by a thick party wall put up many years ago, and well outside the limits of the cemetery.
I watched the work in operation almost daily. During its progress no encroachment whatever was made on the cemetery, and no “bones of honoured Huguenots,” or of any other dead, were disturbed. Had there been any such disturbance our numerous keen-eyed friends around us would quickly have raised the cry by which it is now sought to bring odium on the Catholics. Everything was done in the broad daylight, in view of the high road, and under all the requisite supervision.
You are well aware that no Christian community has greater respect for the dead than the Catholic body; and with this protest against an utterly unfounded imputation I venture to leave the matter in your hands.
And that, so far as I know, was the end of it.
[I’ve begun to transcribe cuttings about Huguenots and the burial ground. See a new page: Huguenots in the Newspapers.]
Last month, I said that I had found Elizabeth Vanderhoven's will, and asked (since I was away from London at the time) whether anybody would go looking for the Grolleau-Vanderhoven headstone. Well, James Buchanan swiftly obliged, and here are his fine photographs of the stone today.
Not easy to read, is it? I wonder if the stone can be cleaned up, or whether deep cleaning would further damage its surface?
Compare Hedley Fitton’s drawing of 1896, when the inscription could still be read. It shows the same stone in the foreground:
As for Elizabeth Vanderhoven’s will, I promised last month to reveal all. In truth I haven’t found the time to explore it properly, but I have transcribed it. You can read the full text on its own page. In brief: she made it on 25 September 1749, as a widow of St Luke’s, Chelsea, and asked to be buried “in Wandsworth Burial Ground commonly called Mount Nod near the Grave of my late Friend Mrs Mary Grolleau”. Judith Grolleau, “now living with me”, was left all her household goods, pictures, plate, jewels, linen and clothes. More on all this when I’ve had a chance to dig deeper.
The last free intake of boys to Emanuel School
In September 1976, Emanuel School took in its last full year of boys whose places were paid for entirely from the public purse - their parents (or grandparents) paid no fees. Most came from local state primary schools and all had done well in the 11-plus exams the previous January.
In 1960, I was one of them. I remember boys from Swaffield, Bonneville and my own school, Earlsfield, in Tranmere Road, and others must have gone to Honeywell and Belleville - but I expect every primary school within several miles of Emanuel sent one or two boys. (I’d love to have a full list.)
There were a few boys from Prep schools too, including Highfield on Trinity Road. (Highfield had the reputation of enjoying such a close relationship with Emanuel that even the dimmest were guaranteed a place, as long as their parents (or grandparents) were rich. But I couldn’t possibly comment.)
After 1965 attempts were made by the Inner London Education Authority to end selection in London's schools and merge Emanuel with others. The first proposal would have seen Emanuel combine with Spencer Park Comprehensive School, recently built next door on part of the Royal Victoria Patriotic Asylum site . The second, of 1972, sought to make the school co-educational by merging it with two girls’ grammar schools on split-sites. (Clapham County , nearly a mile away, and Emanuel's sister school Greycoat Hospital, 4 miles away).
Emanuel was not inclined to go along with either proposal, and fought hard to maintain the status quo. But it was proved impossible, and Emanuel went independent in 1976.
A year later, in September 1977, the first fee-paying boys arrived. The governors had decided in February 1976 to take the school independent rather than see it turned into a comprehensive by the Inner London Education Authority (ILEA). I had left Emanuel nearly ten years before, and I was mostly away from south London in the 1970s, so I hardly noticed the row at the time.
>But reading the position papers now, I find them completely absorbing. The teachers, for example, wrote a detailed critique of the plan to make Emanuel comprehensive (whether by merging it with Spencer Park School next door or with local girls' grammars). Their main fear was that the school would no longer take able but impecunious boys who had always done so well - ahe necessity to charge large school fees would diminishing the pool of talent available to them.
But that too is a story for another day, perhaps next September, fifty years after the first fee-payers arrived. Even so, I can’t resist one splendid quotation from the debates of the time. On 26 March 1975, in a House of Lords debate on the Government’s plans to abolish voluntary-aided and direct grant schools, the Countess of Loudoun rose to defend one school by name: Emanuel.
I would mention one direct grant school, Emanuel School at Wandsworth Common. … Today Emanuel is purely a day school, assisted in drawing boys from considerable distances by its sometimes uncomfortable proximity to Clapham Junction … Last week Emanuel beat Eton to win the Head of the River boat race.
I love the implicit exultation in a (plebeian) Emanuel Eight beating the Eton toffs!
And how about this:
A boy at Emanuel, or some such direct grant school – a school with traditions founded on discipline, order and the pursuit of excellence; a boy possibly from a suburban semi-detached or high rise block of flats – may experience for the first time in his life a sense of identification through the school and its corridors of history with the larger community outside.
This boy will emerge like a house built on a rock, above the tumult of our turbulent society with its threatening waves of recurring crisis.
[The Countess of Loudoun, House of Lords, 26 March 1975 (Hansard, vol 358, cols 1227–29).]
Why did she single out Emanuel? I don’t know. She was a cross-bencher, a Scottish countess in her own right who lived in Leicestershire, and I know of no family link with the school. (She is said to have sat near Lady Dacre, of the family whose bequest founded the school in the 16th century.) If you know more, please tell me.
Emanuel was the only ILEA-maintained school round here to escape the changes by going "independent". No other grammar school - Bec, Battersea Grammar, Sir Walter St John's ("Sinjuns") (boys), or Clapham County and Rosa Bassett (girls) - had the resources enjoyed by Emanuel: they didn't own their own buildings and land, or have such substantial financial resources from a foundation or charitable trust.
Almost every other selective school was closed, or merged with others (selective or non-selective) and reopened as a comprehensive under a new name. The changes of the 1970s transformed local education (at primary as well as secondary levels) and did much to shape the social character of our area.
Nearby Clapham County School for Girls, on Broomwood Road, is a good example. Its old girls’ association, Quondam, tells the story:
This was the age of the ‘Comprehensive’ School when larger, more streamlined and characterless Schools were being built for the instruction, conveyor-belt fashion (or so it was perceived), of vast numbers of students, often spread over two sites. Clapham County School had been selected to become one such ‘Comprehensive’ establishment. Miss Viner [the Headmistress], the Governors, Staff, pupils, parents and friends were all motivated to rise up in protective unison against this demonic plan. So began a long and bitter battle.
Early in 1976 the blow came; the School’s fate was sealed. It was to be merged with Marianne Thornton School, at West Side, the two separate buildings forming a split-site Comprehensive. Miss Viner felt she could not compromise her beliefs and immediately tendered her resignation.
[From Quondam, adapted by the association from Annie Ellis’s history of the school, the Memorial Book to Miss Jones (1966), the Jubilee Year Book (1959) and thirty years of Quondam newsletters.]
Following fierce local resistance led by its headmistress, staff, and parents, Clapham County was officially merged in 1976 with Marianne Thornton School (located on West Side, Wandsworth Common) to form a split-site comprehensive: Walsingham School. (Its charismatic headmistress for the entirety of the school's existence until its closure in [date] was my neighbour on Loxley Road, Alessandra Wilson - about whom much more another time.) Walsingham's site on the edge of Clapham Common is now a housing estate through which "Walsingham Road" now runs.
The historic buildings of the former Clapham County School on Broomwood Road were acquired and opened as the private Thomas's Clapham in September 1993 - one of several examples of local state schools being acquired by private interests, just as Emanuel bought the Patriotic School more than a century earlier (see below).
[Other examples of privatisation include Battersea Grammar School, whose buildings on the edge of Tooting Bec Common) have been occupied by since 1994 by Streatham and Clapham High. A closure and sell-off that still makes my heart ache is the former Hearnville Primary School, which my daughters attended until it was closed in the early 1990s to make way for the (private) Hornsby House.]
[How did Putney High and Streatham and Clapham High - both girls' schools - avoid closure or comprehensivisation? Both belonged to the Girls' Day School Trust (GDST) and had been direct-grant schools since 1944, never part of the ILEA system. When the direct grant was abolished in 1976, they became fully independent, fee-paying schools, as they still are.]
I’ve started a list of what became of our local secondary schools. Corrections and additions are very welcome.
Emanuel goes co-ed
In September 1996 the first cohort of girls arrived at Emanuel in Year 7. (Four girls had already joined the sixth form a year earlier, in September 1995.) However desirable this was on enlightened educational grounds, it must also have made good financial sense: going coed doubled the potential pool of fee-paying children.
[Curiously, in 1972, Emanuel had rejected the ILEA's suggestion that it merge with two girls' grammar schools (Clapham County and Greycoat Hspital .]
It was, in a way, a return to the school's founder’s original intention. In her will of 20 December 1594, Anne Sackville, Baroness Dacre, provided for the bringing up of twenty poor children: a happily egalitarian ten boys and ten girls, with the aim of "bringing up of children in virtue and good and laudable arts so that they might better live in time to come by their honest labour".
Frustratingly, there are no known surviving painted portraits of Anne Sackville, Lady Dacre. Her only visual legacy remains her sculptural effigy on her monument in Chelsea Old Church, recently cleaned, conserved and restored - but I can't even find good photographs of her there:
The detail is elaborate and curious. There is the shield of arms upon the architrave, surmounted by scales, a winged skull and an hourglass, symbolising Judgement, Death, and Immortality; there are flaming urns to right and left, symbols of immortality again; there are pyramids, the proper Elizabethan term for the small obelisks before us, the “starry pointing pyramid” of Hilton’s epitaph on Shakespeare, and the emblem since classical days of eternity.
As an adult Ann was an avid advocate of education for both sexes, as she found many schools for boys and girls in Tothill Fields, Westminster, one of which is still running, this is Emanuel School, begun in 1594 and now in Battersea.
[Chelsea Old Church: Gregory Fiennes, Lord Dacre of the south, and his wife Ann Sackville See also DNB: Anne Fiennes for some tantalising glimpses of her will, which would be worth following up; and Living London Hisotry: Delving into the Treasures of Chelsea Old Church. which has many fine images.]
But in 1873, when the charity was reorganised, the girls were sent to the Grey Coat Hospital in Westminster, still a girls’ school today. The school moved from Westminster to Wandsworth Common in 1883, taking over the building of the Royal Victoria Patriotic School for Boys, and for the next 112 years it was a boys’ school.
[I've written about the Patriotic School for Boys already, including in September 2022, December 2022 and February 2024 Chronicles. See also my transcription of B.V. Slater’s superb history of the Patriotic School.]
I wonder how much Emanuel School has been influenced by the ending of the 11-plus exam, and of free access to all to selective schools, regardless of ability to pay? What have been the effects of creating an essentially bi-partite system, public and private? And what of the arrival of girls? How much have these changes significantly influenced the social character of our area?
I'd love to hear from readers about your experiences of local school reorganisations and closures.
Send me an email if you enjoyed this post / want to comment on something you’ve seen on the site / would like to know more — or just want to be kept in touch.
If you would like to receive notifications of new Chronicles, let me know . . .
Philip Boys (“History Boys”)
September 2026
And sign up to Clapham Junction Insider ("Community News for Clapham Junction, Battersea, Wandsworth and beyond"). Newsletters are very informative, sharply written and well-illustrated; they're chock full of important local stories, mostly about local democracy and "development".