*ARTS EDUCATIONAL SCHOOL
This co-educational specialist school has been at 14 Bath Road since 1986. The building previously housed the Acton and Chiswick Polytechnic which was on the site of the Chiswick School of Art. ArtsEd, as it is usually known, offers pupils aged 11-18 an education where dance, music and drama are held in equal esteem with academic qualifications.

BEDFORD PARK SCHOOLS
Bedford Park residents formed a registered company to open their own, rather unconventional, school, the Bedford Park School Ltd in 1884. Its premises were initially in the Chiswick School of Art and it was co-educational and non-religious. This was not to the liking of other Bedford Park parents who started a rival school with a distinctly Christian ethos later that same year. Called the High School, Bedford Park Ltd this had premises in 9 Priory Road (now 15 Priory Avenue). Bedford Park School changed its name to Chiswick High School in 1886 when it moved to the Georgian Sydney House and in 1894 the High School, Bedford Park moved to 8 (now 9) South Parade, known as ‘The Canaries’. However, in 1895 the schools merged to form Chiswick and Bedford Park High School Ltd with premises in Sydney House until the end of 1898, and, from 1896 also in ‘The Canaries’. In 1899-1900 the school ceased to be a limited company and by 1901 was at 9 Queen Anne’s Gardens. By 1908 it was in Priory House. The present *Chiswick and Bedford Park Preparatory School, in the same premises, was established in 1915. From about 1896 No 14 The Orchard was occupied by a succession of schools that continued until well into the 1930s. *Orchard House School at 16 Newton Grove opened in September 1993.

*BELMONT SCHOOL
Named after Belmont House, one of the many large mansions that once stood along Chiswick High Road and which was demolished at the end of the 19th century, Belmont School in Belmont Road opened in 1905 in a building completed that year as a school for boys, girls and infants. It took pupils from the National Schools at Turnham Green which it replaced.

BEVERLEY ROAD SCHOOL
An infants’ school which opened in 1926 on the site of All Saints Mission Church in Beverley Road off Chiswick Lane. The school closed in 1978 when it was amalgamated with Hogarth Infants School. Griffin Court (completed 1994) occupies the site.

BRITISH SCHOOLS
This was the name given to schools set up by the British and Foreign Schools Society which was formed from an earlier body in 1814. British schools were non-denominational, in contrast to other schools which were under the control of the Anglican Church. Chiswick had a British School at Strand-on-the-Green in 1829. This moved to a new building in 1833 which later also doubled as a congregational chapel. In 1857 this school became a National School. There was a British School in Chiswick Lane by 1832. The Hammersmith, Chiswick and Turnham Green British School opened in British Grove in 1837 and continued until 1864.

*CAVENDISH SCHOOL
The primary school in Edensor Road opened in April 1952 with places for 280 children. It was one of two primary schools (the other being Grove Park School) built under a 1950 County Council building programme.

*CHISWICK COMMUNITY SCHOOL
Now the only state secondary school in Chiswick, this opened as Chiswick County School for girls in Burlington Lane in 1916. Ten years later Chiswick County School for boys opened on an adjacent site. The two schools merged to become a co-educational grammar school in 1966, and, in 1968 amalgamated with the secondary modern school in Staveley Road to become a comprehensive.

CHISWICK POLYTECHNIC
In 1899 the Middlesex County Council took over the Chiswick School of Art to form the Acton and Chiswick Polytechnic. When some departments transferred to Acton in 1928 it was renamed the Chiswick Polytechnic. The building was flattened by a bomb in 1944 but replaced by a flat-roofed block. The polytechnic closed in 1982 and the building is now occupied by the Arts Educational School.

CHISWICK SCHOOL OF ART
This was one of the public buildings on the Bedford Park estate intended to give the new development a sense of community. Designed by Maurice B Adams it opened in Bath Road in 1881. Among other subjects it offered ‘Freehand drawing in all its branches, practical Geometry and perspective, pottery and tile painting, design for decorative purposes – as in Wall-papers, Furniture, Metalwork, Stained Glass…’ Pupils included the brother and sisters of W B Yeats. In 1899 the School was taken over by the Middlesex County Council and became the Acton and Chiswick Polytechnic, changing its name in 1928 to the Chiswick Polytechnic. The Arts Educational School now occupies the premises, so maintaining the site’s original artistic tradition.

CORONA STAGE ACADEMY
This stage school, founded in Chiswick, was responsible for training such stars as Denis Waterman, Nicholas Lyndhurst, Jane Asher and Michele Dotrice. It was started by Rona Knight (1911-2003), who trained as a dancer and lived with her family at 537 Chiswick High Road. Rona called her school The Corona Dancing School, to reflect her own name and its association with the coronation of George V on 22 June 1911, the day she was born. In the 1930s Rona and her troupe began to put on dancing and singing displays in local cinemas and town halls. Known as the Corona Babes they were soon asked to perform professionally around the country. In 1936 the Knight family and the school moved to 26 Wellesley Road and, although disrupted by the War, the School was resurrected in 1950 as the Corona Academy of Stage Training. The Wellesley Road premises, though, lacked the necessary facilities and in 1955 the Corona Academy moved to 16 Ravenscourt Avenue, Hammersmith. It closed in 1989.

GLEBE SCHOOL
Opened in 1877 between Glebe Street and Binns Road because of overcrowding at the existing schools due to the rise in Chiswick’s population. The school moved to Duke Road in 1884 and closed in 1926.

*GROVE PARK SCHOOL
The school for juniors and infants opened in Nightingale Close in 1952.

*HOGARTH SCHOOLS
The primary and nursery schools, initially known as Hogarth Road board schools opened in 1884 in Duke Road. Hogarth Primary, was renamed William Hogarth School in 2001 and moved to a new building in 1958, next door to the Hogarth Infants School which had opened in 1920 in Hogarth Lane and moved to Devonshire Street in 1956.

NATIONAL SCHOOLS
The name given to schools after the formation of the National Society for the Education of the Poor in the Principles of the Established Church in 1811. The Society gradually took over the existing charity schools. In Chiswick there was a National School for boys south of Turnham Green by 1819 (this moved to a new school building in Essex Place in 1848) and a National School for Girls in a building on the south side of St Nicholas Church which had been erected as a charity school in 1707. By 1867 the girls had transferred to Horticultural Place. All these buildings have now been demolished, the building by St Nicholas in 1951; the building in Essex Place about 1968 and that in Horticultural Place about 1972. The present Strand on the Green school was also a National School between 1857 and 1872, the year that Chiswick formed a School Board under the Education Act of 1870. After that all Chiswick schools were known as Board Schools.

*ST MARY’S ROMAN CATHOLIC SCHOOL
This voluntary-aided junior, infants and nursery school was opened in Acton Lane after World War II. It moved in 1964 to the building in Duke Road which had formerly been the premises of the Hogarth Schools.

STAVELEY ROAD SCHOOL
Opened in 1927, it became a secondary modern school before merging with Chiswick County Grammar School in 1968 to become the present comprehensive Chiswick Community School. The school buildings in Staveley Road were demolished and houses were built on the site.

*STRAND-ON-THE-GREEN SCHOOLS
They originated as a British School opened in 1829, becoming a National School for girls and infants in 1857 when it was on the south side of Thames Road. The schools moved to new premises north of Thames Road in 1874. A new building for boys was added in 1912 and, in 1939, new buildings for infants and juniors.