Collection SCH30 - Crosfield Nursery School

Land had been conveyed on 15 July 1932 to the Trustees of the Croydon Mothers and Infants Welfare Association which had been formed for the purpose of promoting the health and welfare of the expectant and nursing mothers and infants in Croydon. The intention was to erect a Nursery School (with or without payment as the Association might determine), the Trustees being Mrs Helen Grace Crosfield of Eskdale House, Castlemaine Avenue, South Croydon, the widow of Hugh Theodore Crosfield JP, Rosalind Jessie Everett of Yew Tree House, Hartley Old Road, Purley, Surrey widow and Winifred Jane Philpott of 63 Blenheim Park Road, South Croydon. The Secretary of the Association was F.G. Brown, of La Roque, Overton Road, Sutton, Surrey.

Later, Helen Crosfield seems to have been succeeded as a Trustee by Priscilla Crosfield and Rosaline Everett by Barbara Duncan Harris. The land was at about 91 Canterbury Road (i.e. on the south side of the Canterbury Road between Priory Road and Mitcham Road), with a paint factory and a carriers yard on one side and a metal works on the other, but with a gate leading onto Canterbury Road Recreation Ground. The premises were closed in September 1939. In March 1947 the then trustees Winifred Jane Philpott JP, the wife of Alan Philpott, Gentleman, Barbara Duncan Harris JP, the wife of George Percy Harris of 24 Haling Park Road, Croydon, Gentleman and Priscilla Crosfield of 122 Mortlake Road, Kew Gardens, Richmond, Surrey, Spinster, conveyed the property to the Corporation, the declared intention being that it should be used as a Nursery School.

It had, during the war, been used as a Red Cross Centre but had been reopened as a Nursery School on 3 September 1946. In November 1953 the present Nursery School site off Elborough Road was purchased compulsorily by the Corporation from the South Suburban Co-operative Society Limited for 163100, the land having previously been used as tennis courts and having fallen into disuse. The building seems to have been used initially as an annexe to South Norwood Junior School Crosfield Nursery School moved into the premises in September 1962.