Celebrating 90 Years At St James' - Biography Of Our School

Where to begin ? One could begin on Tuesday 28th. August 1934 when St. James’ Central School , as it was then called, first opened its doors to three hundred and ten pupils and nine teachers, eight of whom were Dominican Sisters and one lay teacher, Moira Stuart, who taught Domestic Science a subject now known as Food Technology. The day was warm but alas also wet with fairly heavy rain. St James’ then consisted of a small number of classrooms and an assembly hall around a central grassed quadrangle . There were no internal corridors only a covered walkway between the rooms. Once one exited a classroom one was straight into the open air and the weather of the day, clement or inclement. One often wondered had the drawings of St. James’ been mixed up with those designed for a warmer climate. The School’s design certainly cultivated a hardiness in pupils and staff alike. Adjacent to St.James’ was St. Rose’s Convent, a large Victorian mansion built in 1880, where the Sisters resided and also housed St. Rose’s private school, but more of that later.

The origins of St. James’ can be traced back to 1896 and the South African Congregation of Sisters who originated in the city of Newcastle , Natal, now known as KwaZulu-Natal Province. But again later, more of those origins . But the immediate origins of St. James’ can be traced to the Annunciation School , Thirleby Road, Burnt Oak which opened in 1931. The Annunciation School sited next to the Catholic Church of the Annunciation, was an all-age school catering for children from five to fourteen years. The school was constantly having to respond to an ever-increasing demand for places and a major expansion was planned in 1933/34.However, these plans for expansion were aborted and rather than expand the Annunciation School on its rather crowded site it was decided to build a new school for children who were 11+ in the grounds of St. Rose’s Convent, in Orange Hill Road. Thus, the Annunciation School was both parent and midwife to the new School of St. James’ for the senior (11+)girls and boys.

Burnt Oak ,at the beginning of the twentieth century , until 1924 consisted of an undulating landscape , beautiful vistas with streams and trees . Much of it was farmland. Between 1924 and 1931 it was transformed into an urban landscape when the then London County Council built the Watling Estate to house families, from inner London, who lived in sub-standard accommodation. Many of those families were catholic . The Cardinal Archbishop of Westminster, Francis Bourne, invited the Dominican Sisters to provide Catholic schools for the children of those families. Thus, the Annunciation and then St. James’ were built to provide that Catholic Education for the new inhabitants of the Watling Estate.

The history of St. James’ encapsulates also much of my life-story as I, at the age of eleven , became a pupil in 1953. St James’ ,which then was but nineteen years of age, became for the next five decades a huge part of my life.

To be continued in the next newsletter…

Kevin McSharry

Headteacher Emeritus