Alida Baxter

Renowned London journalist and author

 

View from Soho

- Primary Schools

alida baxter

It may come as news to the hordes of visitors who throng the West End of London that people (and not just celebrities) live here, and not just people but families. Whether you're walking down Charing Cross Road to the National Portrait Gallery, shopping in Oxford Street or having a drink in Soho , you'll be surrounded by flats. I once helped with canvassing in a Council Election, and the electoral roll just for our little ward made the Bayeaux Tapestry look like a hanky!

Families have children, of course, and they go to school in the area, just as I did. But their schools may be more interesting than most. I can never look at Soho Parish School in Great Windmill Street without gaping it's such an extraordinary structure in an otherwise very ordinary street.

What we can see from the pavement is a Victorian Gothic adaptation of a Georgian building, so it looks as though someone's run amuck with a white icing pipe over the yellow bricks. There's even a blocked-up window, which should be a remnant of the old light tax (did you know that's where we get the expression daylight robbery from?) but could be a bizarre Victorian replica of the original. And what you really can't ignore is a majestic bust of Edward Geoffrey 14th Earl of Derby looking down at you from on high, set amongst the madly rioting white scrolls and swags. The school was founded in 1870, and dedicated to Lord Derby, but the buildings on this site were acquired and adapted later in the decade, and perhaps the idea was to put the fear of God into the pupils. By the 1890s the premises had expanded to their present size, and I beg you to find this curiosity for yourselves I suspect the theatre-goers only minutes away in Shaftesbury Avenue haven't the faintest idea that the school, its playground and its wild architecture exist.

I spent some terms here when I was very small, and can remember only the games, taking my surroundings for granted, (I didn't have nightmares) but after a long spell of illness I was transferred to a Primary School that I fell even more in love with, and still think of with affection when I see children coming home in its uniform: the bright red blazers and crests are unmissable.

St. George's Hanover Square Primary School is actually in South Street , in one of the most enchanted corners of Mayfair . (The name comes from the fact that it's within the Parish of St. George's , Hanover Square .) It, too, is Victorian, but in a more familiar form, on a generous scale that's ideal for the purpose and what a wonderful location for any school.

The Roman Catholic Church only yards away in Farm Street is very well-known, but much more striking, to me, and more beautiful, is the Grosvenor Chapel, just around the corner in South Audley Street. It still looks to-day as it did when I attended services there with my classmates, as the children continue to do each Friday. Freshly painted, it's an exquisite Georgian jewel in blue and white, and there are plans to restore the interior.

It was built in 1730 as a private chapel for the people living around it, as fashionable London extended and the rich and elegant didn't want to leave their property development in order to worship. It wasn't just a question of convenience - they might have risked accident if they'd strayed into some of the areas that separated them from the churches to their East.

In the nineteenth century the chapel became part of the Parish of St. George's , but physically it is untouched: modest in size but with a graceful spire and gilded clock. Farm Street Gardens lie behind it, and those gardens, which the school backs on to, must be the quietest and most delightful in the West End . They're like a lovely secret, although they can easily be entered from Mount Street , as well as South and South Audley Streets.

Trust Americans to have discovered them! Presumably happening on the gardens on the way to or from the Embassy in nearby Grosvenor Square , citizens of the U.S.A. have made a noiseless take-over. The paths are lined with benches, each bearing a plaque with the name of the donor, most often followed by the words Who Loved These Gardens. Benches with plaques like this can be found in parks and squares all over London , but here what fascinates me is that in almost every case the name is that of an American, usually mentioning their home State. It's a quirk that adds even more character to the place.

The school matched the Chapel and the gardens for excellence when I attended it, and its reputation is, if anything, even greater now. Here the classrooms were high and airy, the playgrounds spacious and the teachers memorable. We started French early (an enlightened move then), I had piano lessons (much to the agony of the family friends where I practiced endless scales) and I learned to love Geometry, arriving at secondary education to a chorus of disapproval She already knows theorems! It's not fair!

It was a pleasure, too, to walk to school through Berkeley Square . From time to time there'd be a plague of caterpillars, so slim they were barely visible, but inching over everything, everywhere. I never tired of going up to people sitting on the crawling benches and saying politely, Excuse me, do you know about the caterpillars?, so I could watch them leap to their feet, shriek and start swatting. It made me late but I couldn't resist it! Small wonder I went so happily to that lovely school.

© Alida Baxter

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