Move to Ealing Day

Move to Ealing

Earlier this year, Notting Hill and Ealing High School celebrated its first Moving to Ealing Day. Everyone was eagerly anticipating what this day would entail and we weren’t disappointed. After a selection of students walked from the old school site to the current school to mark the occasion, we all settled down for an assembly to celebrate the history of the school. Listening to extracts from the school archives about different pupils’ experiences of the move was fascinating and we all felt considerably more informed about the history of our school by the end of the day.

An extract from Mr Shoults’ speech:

Miss McCaig arrived at a pivotal and complex time for the school. It was a time of considerable political change. The great depression had taken its effect across America and Europe. There was unrest across Europe. There were stirrings of nationalism in the British Empire, particularly in India, which Winston Churchill, out of power, but not without influence, was fiercely opposing. George V was fretting about the suitability of his son Edward as a future king. And the school was facing its own challenges. Quite simply, there was a need for greater space, coupled with the fact that more girls lived to the west of the school; and, something you may find strange now, Notting Hill had rather declined as a neighbourhood – some areas were described as the worst in London.

It had been determined by the GDST that a move west was the right response. There was space to the west, and many of the girls lived west of the school; a move in that direction would not be problematic. There were other schools in the Ealing area. But St Helena’s was not really an academic school; and the private schools in the area refused to admit girls whose parents worked in “trade”; class division at work!

But the head of the time, Miss Oakden, did not feel up to the challenge of the move, and asked to step down. And so Miss McCaig accepted the challenge.

And it was not just a logistical challenge. The girls were unconvinced of the move. As one student said: “She came at a time when we had just been told of the great change that was about to take place, the transfer of the school to Ealing. It seemed the end of the world at the time.”

Another former student said: “I remember well how we at first rebelled against the idea of a move—we refused to believe that we were to leave our beautiful panelled hall and all the traditions built up since 1873.”

But immediately Miss McCaig calmed the nerves. As another old girl said:

“The Headmistress listened to our outbursts but steered our enthusiasms towards the new venture, enlisting our aid in the practical details of such an enormous “house-moving” so that we were made to feel privileged to be the ones to help in the great pioneering movement.”

Olwen Liddell, a young pupil at the time remembers “Although I was young, my main recollections of the move were that it must have been a smooth one as there was a general air of calm that reigned whatever hiatus was going on in the staff room.”

Notting Hill’s new home was Girton House which, like the original home in Norland Square, had once been a school. Although the buildings were in better condition than those in Norland Square, there was, nonetheless, lots of building work to do and this was not finished when the school re-opened in January 1931. The setting must have been almost rural at the time. Ealing was pretty much a village; and there are references from the time to the Watermeadows of Perivale. But the district and central lines were in place. And at that time it was the 65 bus which made its way up from the station to Cleveland Road.

The packing was quite occupying as one former student recalled: “library books, science apparatus, acting costumes, pens and pencils, all in brown paper parcels neatly labelled. All chairs and desks had to be labelled too, so as to get to the right room in the new school.” Term broke up with the carol service on 19th December. Girls and staff departed the buildings, and the belongings started their move. The clocks in the old building were stopped one day at a quarter past four.