Whitelands College Girls' School Old Girls' Association

Whitelands College School, founded in 1842, was attached to Whitelands College, founded in 1841, as a training college for women teachers, and taken over in 1849 by the National Society. They were situated in King's Road, Chelsea, on the corner of Walpole Street. The buildings of college and school surrounded a quadrangle, which, like the chapel, was used by both college students and girls of the school.

In 1917 the college was obliged to extend its premises and so the school had to be closed. A new school, Lady Margaret School, was opened at Parsons Green, with Miss Moberly Bell, who had taught at Whitelands, as head, but this was under a different council. In 1931 the college itself left Chelsea for West Mill, Putney, and the Chelsea site was developed as flats.

In the early 1900's the pupils of the school were daughters of doctors, officers at the Royal Hospital, shopkeepers and so on, from Chelsea, Kensington, Westminster, Battersea and Wandsworth. There was a kindergarten for both girls and boys, and of girls leaving the upper school some went on to the college, others into a variety of posts (A/WSO/29). Junior County Scholarships offered by the LCC c 1907 were tenable at the school; at this time some of the London County Council's own new secondary schools were still in temporary premises.

From its inception in 1893 the Whitelands Rose Guild, its successor the Old Girls' Association, and also the Hebblethwaite Memorial Guild, had as secretary Miss Alice Denning who was secretary to the college from before 1906 until after the move in 1931. She retired as secretary of the OGA in 1949, and died in 1955. Since the school closed in 1917, the OGA could have no new members after this date, but continued to meet annually at the college in Chelsea, and latterly at Putney, until 1965. By then the numbers were so low that the 1966 meeting was held at the chairman's house. The OGA came to an end in 1967.