First day at school

St Dunstan’s College opened its doors to new pupils on 2nd October 1888. The opening, however, was preceded by many years of planning and construction. The original Trustees were appointed as early as 1866 and the building itself was designed during the following year. The architect, Edward Middleton Barry, was also responsible for the design of the Royal Opera House in Covent Garden, which was reconstructed in 1857, following a fire.

The College’s official opening ceremony was held in the Great Hall on Monday 1st October, 1888. This was a grand affair, officiated by Sir Henry Enfield Roscoe, an eminent barrister and scientist. During his speech he referred to St Dunstan’s as “what might be said to be the first great secondary school conducted on modern principles”. This chimed with the original Governors’ aim that “St Dunstan’s College should be in advance of the present time and should have special reference to Scientific and Technical Education”. Attendees at the opening ceremony would have seen a building that, from the outside at least, has changed little over the intervening years. The original plans include a very familiar front elevation: Lunch was laid on for 100 guests and a special train had been arranged to transport them from Charing Cross and Cannon Street stations. Even then, however, train services were plagued by unreliability (the return journey from Catford Bridge took over an hour) and the Clerk to the Governors complained bitterly to the General Manager of the South Eastern Railway, demanding the return of the special premium which had been paid. On the following day, 2nd October 1888, the school opened its doors to its new pupils - 91 started on that day, divided into four classes. Although the first pupils comprised a wide range of ages (from eight years two months to fifteen years four months) the vast majority were between ten and twelve years old. One of the youngest pupils recalled that, “I was entered as a pupil at the opening of the new school, being then about eight years of age. I had to walk from my home in Forest Hill and it is interesting to remember that the first half of the journey was through fields”.

Records indicate that the vast majority of the first hundred entrants to the school lived very locally: 36 were from Catford, 31 from Forest Hill, nine from Lewisham and six from Sydenham. Presiding over the new school was its first Headmaster, Charles Maddock Stuart, who was just 31 years old at the time. By all accounts he was a stern and strict man, but he clearly had a gentler side, writing in 1892 that:

“It is possible that there is a fault in our school training, that we make too much of courage and pluck and endurance, and that we do not think enough of gentleness and forbearance and

consideration for others.” Charles Stuart served as Headmaster until 1922.