Papers of the Bayswater Jewish Schools

The Bayswater Jewish Schools were founded in 1866, in the upper part of a house in Chichester Place, W2, with 20 pupils. The school has moved several times, because of an increase in numbers, to Westbourne Park Villas; to 179 Harrow Road, W2; and to Lancaster Road, North Kensington in 1930. In the 1890s it had about 230 children on the roll. It came under the aegis of London County Council from 1904, as a voluntary aided school, for the `Instruction of Jewish children of both sexes in the usual branches of a religious and secular education'. By c.1908 the school was divided into three departments, for boys, girls and infants. Its finances, however, were precarious and in 1930 a major fund-raising initiative, headed by Chief Rabbi Hertz, sought to place affairs on a firmer footing. The school received the first of a series of benefactions from the Wolfson family c.1938, and became known as the Solomon Wolfson School. In the 1960s and 1970s, the school was a voluntary aided primary school, with about 280 children in junior and infants sections. Its curriculum was similar to that of state schools, with the addition of Hebrew and Jewish religious studies. Its pupils came from a wide area across London, many travelling from Maida Vale, Willesden, Newnham, Hammersmith, Chiswick and Ealing.