Talk:Rosa Bassett

School name and location

Streatham County Secondary School appears to be the formal name for the school, as it is used in the books and governing body minutes cited on the Rosa Bassett School page. The County Secondary School, Streatham is also used, but appears in less formal contexts.

The Streatham school buildings now lie just inside modern Tooting, however the references imply it was within Streatham at the time of its construction and it certainly lies within the historic parish of Streatham.

GlossyBreccia (talk) 13:42, 2 August 2008 (UTC)

Comments To The Above

I have in my possession an original 1923 School Prospectus and -- for the FORMAL NAME of the School is there shown as: "County Secondary School Streatham". It is also interesting to note that the postcode detailed thereupon is "S.W.17" whereas the School on the site today (i.e. Graveney School) has, I believe, the post code "S.W.16").

Former 1933-1937 pupil Daphne (nee Whittle) wrote to me recently stating that the Head Mistress "Miss Davies once mentioned that, when the name of the new school in Welham Road was discussed, it was pointed out that it was actually in Tooting. Miss Bassett retorted that she absolutely refused to be the headmistress of a Tooting Secondary School, so - actually inaccurately - the name of Streatham was chosen."

Soniaking (talk) 16:40, 5 August 2008 (UTC)

I'll defer to your reference on the name! In fact, I suspect both forms of name were in common use. Note that I've still swapped the book citation entry back, as that is based on the British Library index record. I've left the other entries in their Streatham-at-the-end form and created a new redirect page, so it's possible to find both and the wikilink is no longer broken.

I'm not sure there's actually a formal definition of where the boundary between Tooting and Streatham is (at least, I've failed to find one). I had checked the Streatham Ancient Parish boundary, and it covers the school. I've now checked the Tooting Graveney Ancient Parish, and it appears to cover it too. Both of these were no-longer formal boundaries by the time it was built, as they had just become part of Wandsworth, as far as I can tell.

Graveney School, including the former Rosa Bassett buildings, are still in SW17, however I suspect this doesn't help much as according to the article on London postal districts the numbering system wasn't introduced until 1917, after the buildings had been opened. What is clear from the 1919 Ordnance Survey map of the area is that Streatham had expanded to border the school to the east but there was still open land to the west before the outskirts of Tooting were reached, so I imagine people would have thought of the school as being in Streatham.

Interesting quote from Miss Davies, which goes some way to explaining the confusion. I've now reworded the article to duck the issue altogther.

GlossyBreccia (talk) 21:19, 5 August 2008 (UTC)

A bit of further research confirms that the Welham Road buildings lie within what was, until 1904, the Ancient Parish/Civil Parish of Streatham. The boundary between Streatham and the much smaller Tooting Graveney ran along Doctor Johnson Avenue, between Tooting Graveney and Tooting Bec Commons, turned along what is now Furzedown Road, down Rectory Lane (then Back Lane), and then turned east, following the River Graveney past Mitcham Lane.

For maps, see Vision of Britain and Map of London by Stanford 1862. The Vision of Britain parish map shows two possible boundaries, one as described above and a second that omits most of the southern portion of the Streatham parish, incorporating it in Tooting Graveney; I've been able to find no other map showing this alternative boundary, and there's no explanation in the notes on boundary changes, so it may be an error. The boundary described earlier is quite clearly shown on the Edward Stanford map on the second web site.

The Vision of Britain commentary states that Tooting Graveney and Streatham parishes were merged, along with Wandsworth, Putney and Clapham, to form Wandsworth Borough Civil Parish in 1904. Today Welham Road is within Furzedown Ward, which is part of the Tooting Borough Parliamentary Constituency and the London Borough of Wandsworth.

The western portion of Welham Road, including the school buildings, is part of the SW17 'Tooting' postal district; the eastern portion is within the SW16 'Streatham' district. As noted earlier, the SW17/SW16 division wasn't created until 1917.

So, where should the school be said to be located today, and where would it have been when it was built, in 1913? I think today it's pretty unequivocally in Tooting. When it was built I think it was arguably in Tooting, but in an area that had until very recently been part of Streatham, and was still 'socially' closer to Streatham than Tooting; this may explain the choice of name. The minutes of the Governing Body meetings for the period of the move should be held by the London Metropolitan Archives, reference LCC/EO/PS/4/11, and might resolve some of the remaining questions.

Whether Miss Bassett ever expressed the opinion about Tooting referred to in the earlier entry above is hard to say. I note that Miss Davies is not listed amongst the staff in the 1923 prospectus. Would the two ever have met?

GlossyBreccia (talk) 15:11, 9 August 2008 (UTC)