Croydon Head Teachers Association
Souvenirs of annual dinners given to members of the Croydon Head Teachers Association (and others associated with education in Croydon) by Arther H. Harding (1885-1952; Mayor, 1939-42), and his daughter, Miss K. Maureen Harding. Mr Harding did not attend the dinner in October 1952 through illness, and he died in November. The location is the Cafe Royal, North End, Croydon.
Henry Grantham was employed as a Gamekeeper on the Ballards Estate, owned by Charles Hermann Goschen. He was born in 1861 in Ewhurst, Surrey
Thomas Bainbridge, active 1778-1818, was a well-known land surveyor and cartographer of estate and enclosure maps. He was based in London in Grays Inn, but worked in all parts of the country.
Ashburton Junior School opened on 20 July 1928 and was known for the first few months as Long Lane School. It was a combined Junior and Infant School until 19 April 1950 and became a Junior School on 20 April 1950. Ashburton Senior School had opened on the same site in 1931 although it was a separate school administratively. It transferred to Shirley Road on 04 April 1950. Ashburton Junior School closed in July 2009 when the buildings transferred to Oasis Academy, Shirley Park.
John Whitgift was Archbishop of Canterbury from 1583 until his death in 1604.
Applegarth Infant School opened in January 1967, followed by an official opening on 12 October 1967.
Sanctuary Pride of the Sea was opened in January 1866, with officers from Sancuary 3146 of the Order in attendance. Pride of the Sea was the South Norwood Sanctuary (i.e. branch): the first meeting took place at the Alliance Hotel, South Norwood ( no location is given for any other meeting); and several of the officers can be identified as South Norwood residents.
One Croydon lodge of the Ancient Order of Foresters friendly society (opened at the Ship Inn in 1862) was named Pride of the Ocean: this may explain the Shepherds choice of name.
Meetings took place monthly (although minutes have not been completed for four meetings in the latter part of 1881). Officers, who were elected in December and June for six - month terms, included the following: Ancient Pastor [Chairman]; Sub Pastor; Treasurer; Scribe (or Secretary); First Attendant; First Keeper; Second Keeper; and Auditor. Not all these posts existed throughout the period of the minute books.
Like most friendly societies, Sanctuary Pride of the Sea supported its members (Brothers) or their dependants at times of sickness, hardship or death. The minutes, however, are more concerned with the Sanctuarys administration and ceremonial ( the election of officers and new members, and the imposition of fines dor absence from meetings, or for breaches of regulations such as not wearing a scripp, etc.)
Frederick Foss was a solicitor, who was active in the movement for the incorporation of Croydon as a Borough. When the campaign finally succeeded in 1883, he became the Charter Town Clerk: that is, he briefly acted as Town Clerk until the formal election to the post of CM Elborough. In 1886, he was elected to the Council, and he served as Mayor 1892-1893. In July 1893 he was elected Alderman; and later that year he was made a permanent Justice of the Peace. In 1895 Elborough fell ill and eventually died, and Foss again acted as Town Clerk for five months. The present album was given to him in recognition of this work at a Council meeting on 21 Sept 1896 (Croydon Advertiser, 26 Sept 1896). In 1902 he again acted as Town Clerk; and he was given the Freedom of the Borough in 1907.
The East India company was granted its charter by Queen Elizabeth in 1600. It established the Addiscombe Military Seminary at Addiscombe Place in 1809, for the training of its officer cadets. In 1858, the Company's interests were transferred to the Crown, and the Seminary was renamed the Royal India Military College. It closed in 1861.
Abel Garraway was the son of Daniel Garraway, grocer. Daniel died in 1832, when Abel inherited his copyhold property in Croydon, notably a messuage near the Cornmarket. He also owned some freehold property. He later seems to have lived in Hackney and Mitcham, and died in 1860.
Location of Britannia Club 34 Surrey Street, corner of Bell Hill and Surrey Street.
Formerly Black Lion public house from 1682, renamed Britannia c.1844 closed c.1939
The building was refurbished and became the Britannia Club, a club for service women. It was opened on January 19th 1943 by HRH Princess Alice Duchess of Gloucester. It was also visited by HRH Princess Marina , Duchess of Kent at a later date.
It closed in 1946.
Croydon and the Second World War by Berwick Sayers page 80 1943 quotes;
On January 19th the Duchess of Gloucester opened the Britannia Club for the Womens Services. This had been a derelict public house in Surrey Street which a committee, with Councillor Basil Monk as its Chairman, acquired on loan from the Corporation. It was repaired, and the rooms were each treated as representing a part of England, Scotland, Wales and Ireland by means of singularly effective and attractive wall paintings by Mr H. R. Hatch. It was comfortably furnished with the amenities of a residential club, a canteen service, sitting rooms, a library and sleeping accomodation for about forty girls who could stay there on those times of occasional leave which were not long enough for them to travel to their own homes. It was especialy useful for girls who came from overseas or who had no home of their own. Relays of voluntary women helpers assisted the residential hostess and did much to make the club one of the most popular and beneficent institutions of the time
The 1955 Street Directory lists the building as Britannia Club ( R.A.F. Association) .
Founded before 1873. The history of the school before 1961 is intermingled with that of Broadmead Junior School. Known earlier as Sydenham Infant School; renamed Broadmead Infant School when it moved into new premises, January 1972.
Mrs Caroline (Carrie) Spratt was a dresser at the Grand Theatre (High Street, Croydon) at the same time as her husband was stage door keeper there.
Charlotte Emily Mortimer (born 1867; known as Emily) was a teacher at the Princess Road Board School. She married Harry Marchant in 1896 and had a daughter, Constance Elsie.
She died in 1937.
Harry Guy Simmons (1909-1964) worked as a service mechanic for Croydon Corporation Electricity Department. During World War II he served in No. 9 platoon, G Company, of the 32nd County of London Battalion of the Home Guard, which was made up of Electricity Department staff. He was initially a volunteer, but was promoted to Lance Corporal in about August 1942.
John Kenneth Hill was born in 1918 and lived in Craigan Avenue, Addiscombe, until the Hill family moved to Shirley Road in 1934. Around the age of 4 or 5, he developed polio, though within a few years was able to walk without the use of an iron splint. Both John and his brother Colin Hill attended Hadley House preparatory school and then went on to Whitgift. In 1934 John left school and became a junior Insurance Clerk for the North British and Mercantile Insurance Company.
John soon applied to join the Royal Air Force Volunteer Reserve (RAFVR), but due to his impaired health from the polio was refused on his first application, but was then accepted on his second attempt in 1938.
Pilot Officer John Kenneth Hill was killed on 17 April 1941 when the bomber he was piloting came down in County Wicklow, Ireland, on return from a raid on Berlin. All four crew on board died in the crash.
Norbury Manor High School for Boys
Opened 31 March 1913 as Stanford Road Senior Mixed [Boys and Girls] School. The building was used as a military hospital between March 1915 and June 1919 and the pupils accommodated at Winterbourne Road School. Renamed Norbury Manor in December 1922. Reorganised as separate senior boys and senior girls schools from 4 April 1932. [See SCH76]. Renamed Norbury Manor Secondary Modern Boys School, 1 April 1947. Two thirds of school transferred to premises in Winterbourne Road, 1 September 1954, in preparation for rebuilding programme. School reassembled at Stanford Road, 6 January 1964. Became an 11-14 comprehensive school in September 1970. Closed 31 August 1986 as a result of falling rolls.
Arthur Anderson was born in Scotland, was the founder of the P and O Steamline and lived at Norwood Grove. Extract taken from the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography reads ' By the time of Andersons death in 1868 the P O had the largest commercial fleet of steamships in the world and provided the main link between Britain and its imperial possessions in India, the Far East, and Australia....At his home, The Grove, Norwood, South London, he endowed a working mans institute'. Anderson died of bronchitis at 18 Park Lane, London, on 27 February 1868
By 1834 there was a school held in a cottage and supported entirely by the Rector, the Reverend William Wood of St. John the Evangelist in Old Coulsdon. He applied for a grant on 25 March in that year towards it becoming a National School. In 1845, Thomas Byron III, the Lord of the Manor, gave a parcel of land being part of a garden as a site for a school for poor persons and for the residence of Schoolmaster or Schoolmistress133and for no other purpose whatever. But the Mistress, Ann Webb, continued to live in a nearby cottage, the schoolhouse being occupied by William G. Shepard, a schoolmaster who was only 18 at the time of the 1851 census.
By 1846 there was a National School of 80 mixed pupils, with a master and mistress in two rooms. The school was described as a School of Industry and the master received 1d per week per boy and 3 hours gratuitous labour each afternoon on his land in return for instruction in the morning. It was the only school in the area, meaning that some of the children had to walk for miles to get there, even as far as Hooley and Kenly.
The building and site were privately owned and remained so until October 1923 when they were conveyed to the Rector by a Canon Dickson who had acquired them from the Lord of the Manor. This was probably not the same building or site as that of 1845, an exchange of site being affected by the Lord of the Manor in 1888 and a new building then being erected thereon.
On 19 September 1939 the school transferred to the Keston School buildings and remained there 7 January 1946 with the exception of the period 3 June to the 23 August 1940, when the school was briefly based at the Purley Girls School.
Todhunter, Dowle and Rollason families
The photographs and papers relate to Ernest Rollason, and members of his wifes family, several of whom were teachers or head teachers in Croydon. Ernest Rollasons wife was Winifred Westlake Dowle (b1887), who had been a Pupil Teacher at St Andrews School, Croydon, and then a teacher at St Michaels School, Sydenham, before marrying and later returned to St Andrews as a supply teacher. Winifreds father, Edmund Dowle, was head of the Parish Church Boys School, Croydon, 1882-1894; and of the Senior Boys School, 1894-1895. Her mother, n233e Alice Todhunter (c1860-1898), was the sister of Emily J Todhunter (1869-1909), head of St Andrews Girls (Upper) School, 1884-1908, and of Isaac Todhunter, head of the Parish Church Junior Boys School, ?1894-1909. FA (or JA) Todhunter, head of St Marks Girls School, 1884-1886, was presumably another relation. Mary Large (c1856-1936), head of St Andrews Infants School 1884-1908, had close associations with the family: after the death of Alice Dowle in 1898, Miss Large brought up her two children (Winifred and a younger brother); and she later became godmother to Winifreds son, Geoffrey Rollason, and brought him up while his father, Ernest, was away in the army in World War I.
Ernest F Rollason (c1881-1957) was apprenticed as a pupil teacher at Holly Hall Schools, Dudley, 1895-1899; and then trained at Westminster Teacher Training College, 1899-1901. His first teaching post was as an Assistant at Oval Road School, Croydon, 1902-1903. He then taught at Beulah Road Boys School, Croydon, 1903-1915, before leaving to join the army. At the end of the War, he went to teach at Tavistock Grove Senior Mixed School, where he remained (despite several applications for headships) until his retirement in 1942.