The following text is taken, with permission, from Peter Higginbotham's website, which has a wealth of further information about Norwood School, which transferred to Hanwell, and Lambeth Workhouse, where Charlie Chaplin was an inmate with his half-brother Sydney before moving to Hanwell.
Workhouses.org.uk
The Central London School District was formed in 1849 from the London Unions of City of London, East London and St Saviour, with West London and St Martin's in the Field joining a little later.
Initially, the School District's Board of Management acquired a privately owned pauper school building on Westow Hill in Norwood, run by Mr Frederick Aubin. After the making of alterations costing about £17,000, the school could accommodate 800 children. Mr Aubin was kept on as the school's superintendent, with his wife as matron, until his sudden death in November 1860.
In 1854, the school managers debated extending the existing school, or transferring it to a larger site elsewhere. They eventually decided on the latter course and a 136-acre site was purchased in Hanwell for £13,000.
The new buildings, designed by the partnership of Tress and Chambers, were erected between 1856 and 1861 at a cost of £45,000. The Hanwell Schools, which also became known as the "Cuckoo" Schools (after an old name for the area), received their first admissions at the end of 1856. A total of 1,200 children could be accommodated on the site.
Architect's drawing of "The new Central London District Schools in course of erection at Hanwell" from the Illustrated London News (November 1865)
The Central London District Schools as it was built
By 1934 many additions had been made to the buildings which themselves occupied an area of 20 acres.
Access to the school was via the entrance at the west of the site.
Entrance, with the Boys' playground below
The Gate-Porter's lodge
Mr. J. Holmes, Porter 1900-1937, sitting at the top of the clock tower overlooking the school farm, and the countryside, with Greenford beyond
A view towards the Brent River with reservoir in the foreground, from the tower (1936)
The T-shaped entrance and administration block was located at the north of the site. It contained a board room and various offices on the ground floor, with a chapel and bedrooms on the floor above. In the wings to each side were dormitories and day rooms, with boys accommodated at the west side and girls at the east. In 1890, the front of the main building was cut through with open spaces to produce separate "houses". Each house contained three floors, on each of which was a corridor, two dormitories and a lavatory. Each dormitory had space for between 22 and 49 beds.
A dormitory in 'A Block'
The eastern side wing was two storeys high with two large dormitories on the upper floor with 38 and 49 beds in each. On the ground floor was a cloakroom, "babies" school room, girls' library, two bathrooms, and a lavatory. The single-storeyed western wing contained a technical school, day room, a school room for boys, a bathroom and lavatory.
Infants School - Musical exercises for children of three and four years old
At the rear of the administration block, a large water tower held 40,000 gallons which was supplied from a well 375 feet deep and pumped up by steam engine in the basement. By 1900, the school had its own sewage and gas works and a lodge house at the end of the present-day Home Farm Road.
Flat bed steam engine which pumped water from the 375 foot deep well up to the cisterns in the tower
To the rear of the main block the boys' and girls' playing yards were separated by the single-storey dining hall, with kitchens, laundry, workshops, boiler room and officers' quarters to its rear.
Dining Hall
Children at dinner in 1931 - with trophy case on the right hand wall
The Cookery with a staff of a cook, with her assistant and two kitchen maids, and a male cook, with his assistant and two scullerymen
Wash house and staff of two laundrymen and one laundress
Laundry and staff of one superintendant and twelve laundresses (Late 19th Century)
The playing yards were paved with flagstones and contained two giant-strides, two drinking fountains, and a shed where children not possessing lockers kept their play boxes. In 1890, a gymnasium was erected at the south of each yard.
In 1864, a three-storeyed infirmary was built to the south of the school. On its ground floor it had a dispensary, waiting room, kitchen, and small laundry. On the upper floors were day and recreation rooms and the wards. Four dormitories were allocated to general cases and three for children suffering from ringworm. There was also a detached fever hospital, the ground floor of which was used for the probation of new arrivals. The school lacked any seaside convalescent home of its own but two fortunate children were sent every fortnight to stay in a country cottage. In 1890, a large "ophthalmic school" was erected at the south-east of the site.
Ward in the Infirmary with sick and convalescent boys attended by a sister and four nurses
In 1891, a school house was erected at a cost of £14,000. It stood towards the south of the site, at some distance from the main school. The two-storeyed building had 7 classrooms for boys on the ground floor, and 6 for girls and 2 for infants on the first floor. In March 1900, a separate infants' school was opened to its west. The new block cost £5,690 and could accommodate 250 children. In 1891, a large swimming bath was erected at the back of the infirmary and all the children learnt to swim while at the school. From around 1893, special classes, limited to 25 children, were held by the infants' headmistress for "children of defective intellect".
Classroom - Boys School
Boys at work in the manual training shop
For many years, activities of the children were organised in two "divisions" - the working division and the school division. Up to the age of 9, children stayed in the school division and thereafter spent alternate days in each division. In the school division, they received basic education in literacy and numeracy. By the 1890s, the older boys were being taught history, geography and science. In the working division, they were divided into groups to learn and perform various occupations. For the boys this included tailoring, shoemaking, cleaning, farming and gardening, painting and glazing, carpentry, blacksmithing, and baking. The girls performed needlework, cleaning and attending the dormitories, nurserymaid work, cooking, scullery and dairy work. By the late 1890s, the teaching of trades to boys at the school had been discontinued, although school work and technical training continued up to the age of fourteen. Boys were then sent either to their own homes, working boys' homes, or placed as apprentices. The older girls were given cookery lessons by a "South Kensington certificated teacher" while the matron gave special training to those intending to enter domestic service.
Children were drilled to provide both exercise and discipline, with Swedish exercises being included for the older girls. Boys were taught to play musical instruments and as early as 1865 the brass band accompanied mealtimes. Many boys went to join army bands, several becoming bandmasters.
The School Bands
Staff at the school in the 1890s comprised the headmaster and 10 assistants (3 of whom were attached to the ophthalmic school) for the boys, 7 assistants (2 in the ophthalmic school) for the girls and a head teacher and 6 assistants (1 in the ophthalmic school) for the infants.
Ophthalmia
There was a high incidence of the infectious eye disease ophthalmia amongst children at the school. The disease was probably carried by children transferred from the Norwood School and kept alive by the regular turnover of children arriving from the member unions' workhouses. A particularly serious outbreak in 1862 affected 686 children, with several of the younger ones losing one or both eyes. Improvement in the situation was hampered by a lack of medical knowledge and agreement about the causes and transmission of ophthalmia. In 1868, George Critchett proposed that children in the school's infirmary should be treated like those in the main school, complete with normal lessons. This, he argued, would benefit the children's education and stop convalescents being hurried back to the main school. Also, there would be less attraction for healthy children to feign illness to gain admission to the comfortable surroundings of the infirmary where they would mix with infected cases. Critchett's suggestion was dismissed as being too expensive and inconvenient. In 1874, Mr Nettleship, an inspector of metropolitan pauper schools, recommended that severe ophthalmia cases be removed to a separate building. As a result, iron huts for 100 beds were erected and 4 dormitories in the school reserved for the remaining cases. However, the incidence of the disease remained high. Eventually, in 1889, following the raising of the problem in the House of Commons, the school's managers finally agreed to erect a separate ophthalmic school to accommodate 300 cases. The buildings were completed in May, 1890, at a cost of £30,000.
The Ophthalmic Institute, later known as Park School, was erected to the south-east of the main school on an 11-acre area enclosed by a 6ft wooden fence. The single-storey buildings were constructed from corrugated iron and comprised 15 dormitories, 3 of which were used for sleeping and 2 for stores, etc. 12 large wards contained an average of 27 beds in each, and 3 smaller ones had 14 beds. Other detached blocks contained the kitchens, 2 dining halls, 6 school rooms, the matron's quarters, and nurses' bedrooms and mess rooms.
Any London union could, when vacancies occurred, send children to the ophthalmic school on payment of 12s.6d. a week for each patient.
The Hanwell Schools closed in 1933 but was briefly reopened in 1934 to accommodate boys from the training ship Exmouth where an outbreak of ringworm had taken place.
Infants 'Block D & E' - now demolished
Administration Block
A cricket match in the school grounds
Four guns stood on the colonnade
In 1945, the building was adopted as the Hanwell Community Centre and continues in that role today. Many of the peripheral buildings have been demolished but the main block and former dining hall survive.
To read a more detailed account of the planning, opening and running of the School written by Susan Stewart in 1978 and published by the Hanwell Community Association click here.
To read memories of The Cuckoo School written by those who were pupils click here and for their full accounts click here.