Brentwood School District

The 1834 Poor Law Act led to improvements in the arrangements made for the education of pauper children. Unions, and parishes regulated by local acts, were persuaded to establish schools and to appoint schoolmasters. The policy of separating the children from their parents and sending them, if possible, to the country was continued and in 1866 several Middlesex metropolitan authorities were sending children to schools outside London. The Poor Law Amendment Act of 1844 made possible a further development in this field which was of significance for the metropolitan area. Unions and parishes were empowered to unite and to form a school district which then set up a large separate school for the education of all the indoor pauper children of the constituents of the district. In 1849 the Central London School District (comprising the City of London, West London, and East London Unions, and St. Saviour's parish) took over Aubin's School at Norwood and improved it.

The Brentwood School District was established in 1877 by the Hackney and Shoreditch Poor Law Unions. Pauper children from Shoreditch and Hackney were sent to an industrial school in Brentwood, Essex (known as the Hackney branch Institution) which had been established by the Shoreditch Board of Guardians in 1852. The school was the subject of a scandal in 1894 when it emerged that the staff treated the children with terrible cruelty, resulting in the imprisonment of a member of staff. The school later became Saint Faith's Hospital and is now the site of offices.

The Brentwood School District also ran the Harold Court School, situated on Church Road in Harold Wood. Harold Court was built in 1868 as a mansion house for a wealthy Brentwood solicitor, who became bankrupt in 1882 when the house was taken over by the School District. The school was later used as a lunatic asylum and tuberculosis hospital. In 1958 the hospital closed and in 1960 the house became a teacher training college. It is now private flats.

The Brentwood School District was dissolved in 1885.

Sources: A History of the County of Middlesex: Volume 1, pp. 213-240 (available online) and Peter Higginbotham at The Workhouse website.