Last modified: 20 October 2026 · Build 2
Work in progress, and a companion to Going Comprehensive, which covers the state schools. This page covers fee-paying schools in today’s London Borough of Wandsworth, and especially those that moved into former state school buildings. Dates marked [to check] need confirming. Corrections and memories very welcome.
Before 1944 paying for secondary education was normal. Emanuel charged fees until the 1944 Education Act, and Battersea Grammar School began in 1875 as an upper school for 250 fee-paying pupils. After 1944, with free grammar schools on the doorstep, the area had few private secondary schools: Putney High School for girls and, from 1946, Ibstock Place in Roehampton.
That changed from the late 1970s. Emanuel went independent in 1977. Then, as pupil numbers fell and ILEA and later Wandsworth Council closed and merged schools, surplus school buildings came on to the market. The Survey of London sees Thomas’s, in the old Sir Walter St John’s buildings, as one of “Wandsworth’s post-Thatcher crop of independent schools”, and notes that, “fostered by Wandsworth’s policies, independent nursery, primary and preparatory schools are now frequently to be met with, some in school buildings inherited from municipal and voluntary providers”. Most of the newcomers are prep schools, for children up to 11 or 13. A handful of small senior schools have followed since 2000.
| 1893 | Putney High School (Girls’ Public Day School Company) opens [to check]. |
| 1946 | The Froebel Demonstration School moves to Ibstock Place, Roehampton. |
| 1964 | Linden Lodge School for the Blind leaves Bolingbroke Grove. |
| 1977 | Emanuel independent. Ibstock Place keeps pupils beyond 13. |
| 1990 | ILEA abolished. Thomas’s moves into the old Sir Walter St John’s School, Battersea High Street, in October. |
| 1991 | Newton Prep takes over Raywood Street School, Battersea Park Road. Centre Academy moves into the former LCC education offices, 92 St John’s Hill. |
| 1993 | Thomas’s, Clapham opens in the Walsingham (Clapham County) building. Northcote Lodge opens at 26 Bolingbroke Grove. L’École de Wix opens on the top floor of Wix’s Lane School. The Girls’ Day School Trust buys Battersea Grammar School’s old buildings for Streatham and Clapham High School. |
| 2000 | Thames Christian College (now School) founded, Battersea. |
| 2005 | L’École de Battersea in the old Sacred Heart School, Trott Street. Ibstock Place adds a sixth form. |
| 2020–23 | New senior schools: Northwood Senior (2020), Thomas’s Putney Vale (2021–25), London Park School Clapham (2023). |
Independent schools in the borough that take pupils beyond 11.
Fee-paying from 1883, when it moved to Wandsworth Common, until 1944; a voluntary-aided grammar school, without fees, from 1944 to 1977; independent again from September 1977, after ILEA stopped maintaining it. Now co-educational, ages 10–18. See Going Comprehensive for the story of 1965–77.
Roger Marjoribanks, Emanuel at Wandsworth 1883–1983; Wandsworth Council, independent schools list.
Girls’ school of the Girls’ Day School Trust (originally Company), ages 4–18. Founded 1893 [to check].
Wandsworth Council, independent schools list.
Founded in 1894 in West Kensington as the Froebel Demonstration School, showing the methods of the educationist Friedrich Froebel. Evacuated in 1939; bought Ibstock Place, a house of 1913 by Frank Chesterton (first called St Serf’s), and moved there in October 1946. Took pupils over 13 from 1977, and added a sixth form in 2005. Co-educational, ages 4–18, on ten acres beside Richmond Park and the Alton Estate.
Founded in September 2000 by Dr Stephen Holsgrove as Thames Christian College. Since 2022 in a new building at 12 Grant Road, by Henley Halebrown, shared with Battersea Chapel. Co-educational, ages 11–16 (11–18 in some sources).
Muslim schools of the Al Risalah Education Trust, founded in the 1990s; the secondary school was formerly Balham Preparatory School. Ages 11–16 [dates to check].
Wandsworth Family Information Service; Wandsworth Council, independent schools list.
Specialist school for pupils with learning differences, ages about 9–19. Since 1991 in the former LCC Education Divisional Office, built in 1909 to designs by T. J. Bailey and used by ILEA as offices until 1991 (Grade II listed). See below.
Wikipedia: 92 St John’s Hill; Survey of London, Battersea, draft chapter 4 (Schools), 2013.
Northwood Senior opened in 2020 as the senior school of the Northwood (now Broomwood) group, ages 11–16. In September 2023, under Dukes Education, it became London Park School Clapham, in two Victorian mansions at 7–11 Nightingale Lane, facing Clapham Common [first site to check: Wikipedia says Garrad’s Road].
Wikipedia: Broomwood School; London Park Schools website.
Thomas’s first senior school, on the former senior site of the Hall School Wimbledon at Putney Vale, bought in 2019 and opened in September 2021. Closed in July 2025, when it moved to the new Thomas’s College in Richmond.
Prep schools that keep pupils to 13 or 14 (Thomas’s Battersea and Clapham, Newton Prep, Northcote Lodge, Broomwood, Eaton House The Manor) are in the next section or the list at the end.
Independent schools that moved into old board school, LCC or ILEA buildings, or other public buildings. Most are prep schools.
Sir Walter St John’s School occupied the site from at least 1700 until 1986; the long street front is William Butterfield’s Gothic rebuilding of 1858–9. After standing empty, the buildings were bought freehold by Thomas’s London Day Schools (founded by David and Joanna Thomas in 1977), which moved in in October 1990. Now a prep school, ages 4–13/14. It became famous as the school of Prince George and Princess Charlotte.
Survey of London, Battersea, draft chapter 4 (Schools), 2013; Wikipedia.
The LCC’s County Secondary School for Girls of 1907–9 (T. J. Bailey; Grade II), later Walsingham School, which closed in 1993. Thomas’s bought the freehold and opened here in September 1993. Prep school, ages 4–13.
Survey of London, Battersea, draft chapter 4 (Schools), 2013; London Metropolitan Archives ACC/3708.
A board school of 1881–2, rebuilt by the LCC in 1925–6 for 1,124 children; after the war an annexe of Battersea Secondary School and finally part of Clapham College. Taken over in 1991 by Newton Prep, founded by Farouk Walji, whose roll grew from 70 to almost 600. Ages 3–13.
Survey of London, Battersea, draft chapter 4 (Schools), 2013.
A house of 1876 by E. R. Robson, used from 1879 by the School for the Indigent Blind and from 1902 by the London School Board’s (later LCC’s) Linden Lodge School for blind boys, until the school moved to Wimbledon in 1964. Northcote Lodge, a boys’ prep school (ages 7–13), opened here on 5 September 1993; now part of Broomwood. [Use of the building 1964–93 to check]
Wikipedia: Linden Lodge School; Wikipedia: Broomwood School.
Built 1908–9 (H. L. Holloway, builder; T. J. Bailey) as the only educational building the LCC put up in north Battersea before the First World War. ILEA’s offices until 1991; since then Centre Academy (see above).
Survey of London, Battersea, draft chapter 4 (Schools), 2013.
The Catholic Sacred Heart School of 1878–80 (H. J. Hansom), restored after a fire by F. A. Walters in 1907. When Sacred Heart School moved in 1990 the building became a Montessori school, and from 2005 L’École de Battersea, a French bilingual school, branch of L’École des Petits, Chelsea. Ages 3–12.
Survey of London, Battersea, draft chapter 4 (Schools), 2013.
Since 1993 the top floor of the LCC’s Wix’s Lane primary school has housed a French school feeding the Lycée Français in South Kensington, filling space the state primary school no longer needed. State and private schools share the building.
Survey of London, Battersea, draft chapter 4 (Schools), 2013.
A prep school (ages 4–11) in a former public library [dates of the library and of the school to check].
Wandsworth Council, independent schools list.
Just outside the borough, but Battersea’s own grammar school. Battersea Grammar moved into these buildings by J. E. K. Harrison in 1936. After it merged with Rosa Bassett in 1977 the site went to South West London College and then London South Bank University. In 1993 the Girls’ Day School Trust bought it for the senior school of Streatham and Clapham High School.
Mostly prep schools in large houses rather than former state buildings, listed for completeness (Wandsworth Council’s list): Broomwood (Nightingale Lane; founded 1984 in the Methodist church hall, Broomwood Road), Dolphin School (Northcote Road), Eaton House The Manor (Clapham Common North Side), Eveline Day School (Balham High Road), Finton House (Trinity Road), Hornsby House (Hearnville Road), Hurlingham School (Putney Bridge Road), Merlin School (Putney), Parkgate House (Clapham Common), Prospect House (Putney Hill), The Roche School (Frogmore). [Building histories to check: some may also be former public buildings.]
— Survey of London, Battersea, draft chapter 4 (Schools), 2013 (draft, English Heritage).
— Wandsworth Council, Independent schools in Wandsworth (list with addresses and age ranges).
— Independent Schools Council: schools in Wandsworth.
— Roger Marjoribanks, Emanuel at Wandsworth 1883–1983 (1983).
— Wikipedia articles on individual schools, as cited above.
See also: Going Comprehensive: what became of our secondary schools, 1955–1993.
Compiled by Philip Boys, with Claude, October 2026. Did you go to, or teach at, one of these schools? Please let me know.