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select a site south of Exmouth street, or reconstruct and
enlarge the Bowling Green Lane School. The Vestry,
together with a large number of the inhabitants, then
waited upon the Right Hon. A. J. Mundella, M.P., VicePresident
of the Committee of Council on Education, on
the 15th March, in support of the application of the School
Board, and their views were then very fully laid before
him by the following Memorial from the Yestry, and by
Mr. Robson in support thereof.
To the Right Hon. A. J. Mundella, M.P., Vice-President of the
Committee of Council on Education.
The Memorial of the Yestry of the Parish of St. James and St. John
Clerkenwell, respectfully sheweth,
That it having come to the knowledge of your Petitioners that the
School Board had selected Green Terrace as a site for a Board School,
your Petitioners being of opinion that it was exceedingly undesirable
to destroy one of the better class of residential property (of which there
is too little remaining in Clerkenwell already), appointed a Deputation
who waited upon the School Board in January, 1884, against the site
being taken for the purpose, pointing out another site in the immediate
locality (Lloyd's Row and Thomas Street) as being equally suitable
and not involving the destruction of so good a class of property. That
at that time very strong representations were made to the Vestry by
the inhabitants of Green Terrace and neighbourhood, and also by the
New River Company, against the Green Terrace site being taken.
That in reply to this appeal the Vestry were informed that on March
21st that the Works Committee of the School Board did not see their
way clear to recommend the Board to abandon the site, and that that
suggested by the Vestry would be less suitable of the two. That the
Vestry then entered into the more general consideration of the need
of a Board School being erected on the site in question, and found that
the real need for additional accommodation existed on the south side
of Exmouth Street in the more immediate proximity of the Corporation
Buildings and Farringdon Buildings in Earring don Road, and the
Peabody Buildings in Peartree Court, where there are some 750
dwellings containing a population of some 3,750 persons, exclusive of
the families of the ordinary occupiers and lodgers in this densely
populated locality, and that the children from this neighbourhood, to
attend a school in Green Terrace or thereabouts, would have to pass a
crowded and most dangerous thoroughfare close by the Vestry Hall,
Rosoman Street, at least four times a day. That your Memorialists
then pointed out several other sites south of Exmouth Street, which