Trinity school, now a building at 16A Cloudesley Street, on the corner with Cloudesley Square, has an interesting history, as the following extract from "Cloudesley: 500 Years in Islington" by Cathy Ross describes (see here for information on the schoolmasters at the school):
"... in December 1829 a new project was conceived - building an infant school. Following a search for a suitable site the feoffees agreed to lease a plot to the enterprise and a ‘neat edifice in the pointed style’ was erected, designed by local architect George Legg and built by William Webb of Clerkenwell. The feoffees granted an 81 year lease on the site at a ground rent of £15 and the building cost largely came from donations, including £52 raised by the sale of tickets to ‘an interesting lecture on pneumatic chemistry’.
The little school opened in 1830. This was a private school where donors or subscribers bought the right to nominate children – two children for every donation of 10 guineas. By 1835 240 children were enrolled in the infant school and 263 in the Sunday school which was held in the same building. In 1839 the building was enlarged to become a ‘National School’ accommodating 133 older boys as well as 224 infants."
The school was taken over by the London County Council (LCC) in 1905, closed down as "unfit for purpose", re-opened in 1908 as the "Cloudesley Street Temporary Council School" then closed down again in 1915 (at this time, the LCC also established the school on Dowry Street between Stonefield Street and Cloudesley Road, which remains to this day). The building on Cloudesley Street was then let to the "Elizabeth Whitelaw Reid Club". Cathy Ross again:
"In 1910 the Elizabeth Whitelaw Reid Club had opened on the school premises, bringing an American connection to the Stonefield Estate. Elizabeth Whitelaw Reid was the wife of the American ambassador and an energetic philanthropist. The Holy Trinity club was one of a network she had established in American cities and were designed to provide improving activities for young people in deprived communities. Both Whitelaw Reid and her daughter Lady Jean Templeton Ward, a great beauty of her day [see image], took a personal interest in the Islington club. Lady Ward continued her connection into the 1950s, paying much of the rebuilding costs after a fire in 1958. The youth club continued to run, under the auspices of the Mary Ward Settlement, and in 1958 Cloudesley sold the fire-damaged building outright to the Elizabeth Whitelaw Reid Clubs for Young People Ltd, for £2,200110. The building was extensively renovated with grant support from Islington Metropolitan Borough and the City Parochial Foundation. When the Whitelaw Reid youth club closed in the 1960s the building was sold on to a related organisation, the Grubb Institute."
In Holy Trinity Church there is a plaque commemorating Elizabeth Whitelaw Reid and two others devoted to Kate Gallwey and Maud Alice Bartlett, respectively leader and deputy leader of the club for 30 years.
In the 1970s, 16A Cloudesley Street was redeveloped, retaining its quirky but rather attractive exterior, and was occupied by the Grubb Institute, which "builds on a history of more than 50-years at the intersection of organisational dynamics, systems thinking and integral psychology" (!). Finally, in 2018, it became the home of the Barnsbury Housing Association, of which more here.
There was also a school (“the South Islington and British Schools, later used as a cardboard manufacturer”) built in 1841 on Denmark Terrace, later renamed as 1-23 Copenhagen St, so presumably at the South-West corner of the Cloudesley Estate. There is no trace of the building there today, and little information about the school is available, but we do have these charming images of schoolchildren there, in 1899.
