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Last modified: 20 October 2026 · Build 4
Work in progress. A register of the secondary schools of Battersea, Wandsworth, Putney, Southfields, Tooting and Balham – today’s London Borough of Wandsworth – and what happened to each of them when London’s schools went comprehensive. Some dates still need checking; they are marked [to check]. Corrections and memories very welcome.
Under the 1944 Education Act, children were selected at eleven for grammar, technical or secondary modern schools. The London County Council, and from 1965 the Inner London Education Authority (ILEA), moved early towards comprehensive schools. Elliott School in Putney and Wandsworth School in Southfields were among the first in London, in the mid-1950s. The pressure grew after the Labour government’s Circular 10/65 of 1965. It eased under Margaret Thatcher as Education Secretary (1970–74), who rejected several ILEA plans in 1973. It returned with the 1974 Labour government, which also abolished the direct grant in 1975. The grammar schools that remained had three choices: become comprehensive, usually by merging; close; or go private. Emanuel alone, locally, went private. A second wave of mergers followed in 1986, as pupil numbers fell, and ILEA itself was abolished in 1990.
| 1955–57 | Wandsworth School (announced 1955, fully non-selective 1957) and Elliott School (1956) become comprehensive; Spencer Park School opens, 1957. |
| 1964 | Southfields School becomes comprehensive. |
| 1965 | ILEA formed. Circular 10/65 asks authorities to plan for comprehensive schools. ILEA first raises Emanuel’s future, late 1965. |
| 1969 | Battersea Park School, the area’s largest comprehensive, opens in its new buildings, March. |
| 1971 | ILEA proposes comprehensive schemes for six Wandsworth schools, including closing Clapham County and Marianne Thornton girls’ schools and opening a single comprehensive on their premises. Bec and Hillcroft merge (Bec-Hillcroft). |
| 1972 | Bec-Hillcroft renamed Ernest Bevin School. |
| 1973 | Mrs Thatcher rejects ILEA’s plans for Clapham County, Marianne Thornton, Rosa Bassett and Ensham (22 January). |
| 1975 | Direct grant abolished. ILEA’s Section 13 notice to stop maintaining Emanuel, May. |
| 1976 | Fred Mulley confirms the Emanuel order, 3 February. The governors choose independence, 11 February. Clapham County and Marianne Thornton merge as Walsingham School. |
| 1977 | Battersea Grammar and Rosa Bassett merge as Furzedown Secondary School. Sir Walter St John’s and William Blake merge as a boys’ comprehensive. Emanuel takes its first fee-paying boys, September. |
| 1981 | Lavender Hill girls’ school closes. |
| 1986 | Second wave: Spencer Park + Wandsworth School = John Archer; Furzedown + Ensham = Graveney; Mayfield + Garratt Green = Burntwood; Hydeburn + Henry Thornton = Chestnut Grove; Sir Walter St John’s is merged into Battersea Park School (1986–88). |
| 1990 | ILEA abolished; Wandsworth Council takes over its schools. |
| 1991 | John Archer School closes. Walsingham’s bid for grant-maintained status fails, and a judicial review is lost in July. |
| 1993 | Walsingham School closes, summer. Thomas’s opens in its Broomwood Road building, September. |
Grouped roughly by district. The tag shows what happened in the end.
Voluntary-aided boys’ grammar school from 1944, when fees were abolished.
ILEA first raised its future in 1965 and looked at a merger with Spencer Park; this was dropped. In the early 1970s ILEA proposed a split-site merger with Clapham County or with the Greycoat Hospital, or a small comprehensive on the existing site. (The Survey of London describes a 1972 plan to make it co-educational by merging it with two girls’ grammar schools.)
ILEA published its Section 13 notice in May 1975; 36,000 people signed a petition against it. On 3 February 1976 Fred Mulley confirmed that ILEA would stop maintaining the school at the end of the 1976–77 school year. On 11 February 1976 the governors chose independence rather than closure.
ILEA went on paying for boys already at the school until they left, the last in 1983. The first fee-paying boys arrived in September 1977: “the founders of the new Emanuel”.
Roger Marjoribanks, Emanuel at Wandsworth 1883–1983, pp. 35–37; Hansard, 10 July 1980 (Emanuel transferred to the private sector in 1977–78); Hansard, 21 January 1980 (finally registered as independent, 1978). See also Emanuel School. The Survey of London says simply that Emanuel “went independent in 1976”, the year of the decision.
Boys’ county secondary school, opened 1957 in and beside the Royal Victoria Patriotic Building, taking boys from Honeywell Secondary, Wandsworth Secondary Technical School and schools in Lavender Hill and Earlsfield. Marjoribanks calls it comprehensive. Moved wholly into the new buildings in September 1976, the old building being unsafe. Merged with Wandsworth School in 1986 as John Archer School (see below).
Wandsworth Heritage Service, Spencer Park School records (S5).
Founded 1700; a secondary school from 1902; a voluntary-controlled boys’ grammar school from 1944 (1951 in some sources). After a failed plan to merge with Lavender Hill School as a mixed comprehensive, it was amalgamated in 1977 with William Blake School as a voluntary boys’ comprehensive, the William Blake building in Bridge Lane becoming its lower school. As rolls fell, that school was merged into Battersea Park School and the historic site given up: in 1988, says the Survey of London, or 1986 according to the school’s archive catalogue. Thomas’s took over the buildings in 1990. The foundation is now an educational charity.
Survey of London, Battersea, draft chapter 4 (Schools); Wandsworth Heritage Service (S17) and London Metropolitan Archives (ACC/2321); Wikipedia.
The “upper school” of the Sir Walter St John foundation, opened on St John’s Hill in 1875. Moved in 1936 to Abbotswood Road, Streatham, so it was a Battersea school outside Battersea. Voluntary-controlled from the late 1940s. In 1977 it merged with Rosa Bassett girls’ grammar school to form Furzedown Secondary School, a mixed comprehensive (see Tooting).
Wandsworth Heritage Service (S21); Wikipedia.
Opened September 1909 as the LCC’s County Secondary School for Girls, Clapham, one of very few secondary schools the Council built before 1914 (Grade II listed; designed 1907 under T. J. Bailey). A girls’ grammar school. In 1970 ILEA proposed merging it with Marianne Thornton as a large comprehensive; Mrs Thatcher rejected the plan in January 1973, but it went ahead, against the governors’ opposition, in 1976 as Walsingham School. (The London Metropolitan Archives catalogue gives 1978, but the old girls’ association, Quondam, and its memorial plaque on the building both give 1976; 1978 is when Walsingham’s first head, Miss Leighs, resigned.)
Survey of London, Battersea, draft chapter 4 (Schools); London Metropolitan Archives (ACC/3708); Historic England list entry 1065557; Hansard, 10 March 1971; Hansard, 22 January 1973.
LCC girls’ secondary school for about 700 girls, between Manchuria Road and Thurleigh Road, on the site of villas with long gardens. First mooted in 1956 as new premises for Elmfield School for Girls, Balham, meant to grow into a comprehensive. Designed in 1957 by the LCC Architect’s Department (job architects H. L. Smith and Warren Chalk) around semi-enclosed courts for “a collegiate atmosphere”; built 1958–60; formally opened July 1961. Named after Marianne Thornton (1797–1887) of Battersea Rise, who cared about girls’ education; E. M. Forster, her great-nephew, had lately published his life of her. Merged with Clapham County in 1976 as Walsingham School. The site was redeveloped for housing under a plan of 1996: the houses of Walsingham Place.
Survey of London, Battersea, draft chapter 4 (Schools); Lambeth Archives, Borough Photos.
Girls’ comprehensive formed in 1976 from Clapham County and Marianne Thornton, at first on both sites, the plan being to concentrate it at Broomwood Road. Its first head was Miss Leighs of Marianne Thornton; her successor from 1978, Alessandra Wilson, built it into an oversubscribed school with a strong record in music and drama. ILEA reprieved it in 1984. In December 1990 Wandsworth Council, newly in charge, proposed to close it; the school applied to opt out as a grant-maintained school, but the Secretary of State refused early in 1991, and a parents’ judicial review failed in July 1991. The Broomwood Road building was emptied in summer 1992 and the school closed in summer 1993. Thomas’s bought the Broomwood Road building in May 1993 and opened there that September as Thomas’s, Clapham. A plaque on the building, put up by Quondam in 1997, commemorates both schools. (Source: Quondam, the old girls’ history.)
Built 1884–5 as the Surrey Lane board school (E. R. Robson, architect), soon one of the “higher-grade” schools. In the early 1920s the upper floors became Battersea Central Schools. When the Central Schools moved to Culvert Road in 1939 the building stayed in secondary use as William Blake School. It survived a threat of closure only to be amalgamated with Sir Walter St John’s in 1977, becoming its lower school. By 1990 the combined school had been merged into Battersea Park School. The building is now housing, William Blake House, in a scheme called The Lanterns.
Its staff minute book (1927–72) survives at Wandsworth Heritage Service, but its history is not described, and the Survey of London does not use the name. [Was it the Battersea Central / Battersea Secondary School that became Battersea Park School? To check.]
Wandsworth Heritage Service (S13).
Grew from Battersea Central Schools, which moved from Surrey Lane into a new LCC building in Culvert Road (built 1938–9, perhaps not opened until 1946, when it became Battersea Secondary School, one of the LCC’s five “experimental” secondary schools). Enlarged into an eight-form-entry mixed comprehensive with new buildings by Bridgwater, Shepheard & Epstein, built 1965–9 and opened by Lord James of Rusholme in March 1969: Battersea Park School, the area’s largest comprehensive. It absorbed Sir Walter St John’s and William Blake in 1986–88. A council-run City Technology Centre (Battersea Technology College) from 1992; Battersea Park School again from 2009; Harris Academy Battersea since September 2014.
Survey of London, Battersea, draft chapter 4 (Schools); Wikipedia.
Board school of 1891–2. Divided after the Second World War into separate schools for girls and boys. The boys moved out in 1957 [to Spencer Park? to check]; the girls’ secondary school then had the whole site until 1981, when it became a branch of Wandsworth College. A plan to merge it with Sir Walter St John’s as a mixed comprehensive failed. The buildings were converted into lofts in 1994–6.
Roman Catholic boys’ school, opened in 1895 in Surrey Lodge, a villa of the 1830s, by the Salesians, who had come to Battersea in 1887. Alfred Hitchcock was briefly a pupil in 1908. Voluntary-aided; rebuilt 1964–6 off Parkham Street; grant-maintained 1993. Shut in 2011 and merged with John Paul II School as St John Bosco College, which returned to the Surrey Lane area in 2015.
Survey of London, Battersea, draft chapter 4 (Schools); Wikipedia.
Began in 1895 as a Day Science School of the Wandsworth Technical Institute; Wandsworth County School from 1908; moved to Sutherland Grove, Southfields, in 1927. Named one of London’s first comprehensives in 1955, and fully non-selective from 1957. Famous for its boys’ choir. Merged with Spencer Park in 1986 as John Archer School, which closed in 1991. St Cecilia’s Church of England School opened on part of the site in 2003.
Wandsworth Heritage Service (S4); Wikipedia.
Formed in 1986 from Spencer Park and Wandsworth School, on the Sutherland Grove site. Closed 1991, soon after ILEA’s abolition. Named after John Archer (1863–1932), Mayor of Battersea, London’s first Black mayor.
Opened 1904 as Southfields School, Merton Road; renamed Elliott School in 1911; a central school. In 1956 the boys’ and girls’ Elliott schools and Huntingfield Secondary Modern merged as Elliott Comprehensive, in new buildings in Pullman Gardens, opened by Hugh Gaitskell in 1957. Ark Putney Academy since 2012.
Wandsworth Heritage Service (S15); Wikipedia.
Girls’ grammar school, opened 1909 (also called Putney County Secondary School). Merged in 1986 with Garratt Green to form Burntwood School.
Wandsworth Heritage Service (S2); Wandsworth School article on Wikipedia, for the 1909 opening.
Girls’ comprehensive on the Burntwood Lane / Aboyne Road site [opening date to check; one former pupil recalls an earlier site in Broomwood Road]. Merged with Mayfield in 1986; Burntwood School opened on its site in September 1986, and won the RIBA Stirling Prize for its new buildings in 2015.
Formed in 1949 from West Hill and Riversdale Secondary Schools as a secondary modern; comprehensive from 1964. Later Southfields Community College; Southfields Academy since 2012.
Boys’ grammar school, founded 1926. Merged with the neighbouring Hillcroft School in 1971 as Bec-Hillcroft, renamed Ernest Bevin School in 1972. Now Ernest Bevin Academy.
Wikipedia; Hansard, 15 February 1971.
Merged with Bec, 1971 (see above). [Type and history to check]
Girls’ grammar school, founded 1906 in Stockwell; moved to Welham Road in 1913; named after its first headmistress in 1951. ILEA’s first plan for it was rejected in 1973. Merged with Battersea Grammar in 1977 as Furzedown Secondary School.
Mixed comprehensive formed in 1977 from Battersea Grammar and Rosa Bassett, on Welham Road (including buildings of the former Furzedown Training College). Merged with Ensham in 1986 as Graveney School.
Founded about 1905; a mixed central school in the 1930s; a girls’ secondary modern in the 1950s; a girls’ comprehensive from the early 1960s. Merged with Furzedown in 1986 as Graveney School; the Ensham site later closed.
Formed 1986 from Furzedown and Ensham. Grant-maintained 1991, partly selective from 1995, an academy from 2011. Through Battersea Grammar it claims descent from Sir Walter St John’s foundation.
Merged in 1986 with Henry Thornton School (a former boys’ grammar school just over the border in Clapham, Lambeth) to form Chestnut Grove School, Balham, now Chestnut Grove Academy. [Hydeburn’s own history to check]
Wikipedia: Lambeth Academy (Henry Thornton).
For the fee-paying schools, and the private schools that took over several of these buildings, see the companion page Going Private: our independent schools since 1945.
— Battersea County School: what was it, and is it the school that became Battersea Park School?
— Hillcroft and Hydeburn: their earlier history.
— Sir Walter St John’s into Battersea Park School: 1986 or 1988?
— Where did the Lavender Hill boys go in 1957, and did Honeywell’s secondary department close when Spencer Park opened?
— Any Catholic or Church of England secondary schools missing here.
— Survey of London, Battersea, draft chapter 4 (Schools) (draft, English Heritage, 2013).
— Roger Marjoribanks, Emanuel at Wandsworth 1883–1983 (1983), pp. 35–37.
— Hansard: 15 February 1971 (six Wandsworth schools); 10 March 1971 (Clapham County and Marianne Thornton); 22 January 1973 (proposals rejected); 26 March 1975 (the Countess of Loudoun on Emanuel); 21 January 1980 and 10 July 1980 (Emanuel’s change of status).
— Wandsworth Heritage Service school records, catalogued on AIM25 (series S); London Metropolitan Archives.
— Quondam (old girls of Clapham County and Walsingham), History of Clapham County School and Walsingham School 1976–2011.
— Wikipedia articles on individual schools, as cited above (secondary sources, to be checked against the archives).
Compiled by Philip Boys, with Claude, October 2026. Did you go to one of these schools? Please let me know what you remember.