The History of our School

History of the Local Area

A map of 1619 of Tottenham shows the area where the school stands today to be mostly farmland at the time. Today the road we know as St Ann’s Rd was called Chisley Lane in 1619.

For many years South Tottenham and Stamford Hill continued to be open countryside surrounded by farms and a scattering of large houses owned by wealthy people. It was in the 19^th century that Tottenham changed from being a small quiet country area.

 

Important changes occurred with the building of railways in the district which led to the development of Tottenham as an area of outer London. In 1872, the Enfield to Liverpool Street Railway opened with stations nearby in Tottenham and so the area really began to change. The railway company offered cheap early morning return fares into the city which were attractive to those working there.

 

The result was an increase in house building for people who wanted to live outside the main city of the London where there was overcrowding and high rents. The introduction of the railways and new roads meant that people could live away from the city and travel into work. Many of the roads and houses around St Ignatius School were built at that time as the population of Tottenham grew.

 

Between 1871 and 1881 the population of Tottenham doubled and then increased again in the following ten years. The building of Seven Sisters Road earlier encouraged further development and was a main route into the city by road transport. At first this would have been by horse drawn carriage and later by trams and eventually by more modern buses.

 

St. Ignatius College

With the growth in the area of South Tottenham and Stamford Hill, a sizable Catholic population had come to live in the area. In 1892 Herbert Vaughan the Archbishop of Westminster received a request from some 300 people in the district for a church, as there was not one between Tottenham and Stamford Hill. Herbert Vaughan’s response was to ask an order of priests known as Jesuits to build a parish church, a secondary school and a primary school for younger pupils to serve the needs of Catholics in the area of South Tottenham and Stamford Hill. Two large houses with extensive grounds named Morecombe Lodge and Burleigh House on the High Road were purchased by the Jesuit order to house a chapel and the new secondary school.

 

The chapel was built in the grounds of Morecombe Lodge but was soon found to be too small, so work was begun later to provide a proper permanent church and that building can be seen today. The church was named after the Jesuit’s founder St Ignatius of Loyola. The priests that work in the parish today belong to the Society of Jesus. A secondary school for boys known as St Ignatius College was opened in September 1894 beside the chapel on the site of Morecombe Lodge and was later extended using Burleigh House. Girls were already educated at St Mary’s Priory situated on the lower part of St Ann’s Rd across Seven Sisters Road.

 

Following the opening of the chapel and the college, the Jesuit priests looked towards the building of a primary school, at a proposed cost of £2500. Two houses known as ‘The Laurels’ and ‘The Woodlands’ and four cottages were bought near the corner of St Ann’s Rd as a site for the new school. The houses and cottages were then demolished to make way for the primary school, which was named as St Ignatius Elementary School and in later years became known as St Ignatius Catholic Primary School.

 

St Ignatius Elementary School

The Elementary School opened on September 2^nd 1901 with 115 pupils between the ages of 5 and 14 years. The first pupil to be registered at the school was William Graham who was born on Christmas Day 1889 and had previously attended Woodlands Park School. The Head teacher was Ms Emily O’ Callaghan and there were two other teachers Agnes Sterlini and Clara Haile. Today that building is known as Anne Line but in the past it was the main school and all the children were educated in it including the infants.

 

When the school opened in 1901 there were six classrooms but in 1912 it was decided to have another floor level added onto the building because the number of children attending had increased by so much. While the work on the extension was taking place a number of classes were taught in the Glendale Parish Hall across the road from the school on St Ann’s Rd.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

A school production circa 1912

Two years later, in 1914, World War 1 began which was to last until 1918. The children continued to attend the school but life was very difficult with air raids over London. There was the added worry that some of their loved ones were away fighting the war. On the 11^th November 1918 peace was declared after four years and the school had a half-day holiday to celebrate.

 

Ted Hayes started at the school in the early 1920’s when he was 4 years 9 months old and remembers those times.