House System
A system of four houses was established in 1907. The houses were known as:
- St John's – named after the founder of the original school, Sir Walter St John.
- Bolingbroke – from Sir Walter's grandson, Henry St John, 1st Viscount Bolingbroke.
- Spencer – after the Lord of the Manor of Battersea (the Battersea estate was purchased from the St John family in 1763 by John Viscount Spencer).
- Trinity – named after a church in the district.
In 1919 two additional houses were created:
- Erskine – after Canon John Erskine Clarke, the former Vicar of Battersea and member of the Sir Walter St John Trust at the time of the establishment of the school.
- Dawnay – after Sir Archibald Davis Dawnay, who had been Mayor of Wandsworth from 1908 until his death on 23 April 1919, and was a benefactor of the school.
House colours were: St John's - dark blue; Bolingbroke - yellow; Spencer - green; Trinity - red; Erskine - pale blue; Dawnay - purple
Read more about this topic: Battersea Grammar School
Famous quotes containing the words house and/or system:
“Turn back. Turn, young lady dear
A murderers house you enter here
I was wooed and won little bird”
—Allen Tate (18991979)
“Justice in the hands of the powerful is merely a governing system like any other. Why call it justice? Let us rather call it injustice, but of a sly effective order, based entirely on cruel knowledge of the resistance of the weak, their capacity for pain, humiliation and misery. Injustice sustained at the exact degree of necessary tension to turn the cogs of the huge machine-for- the-making-of-rich-men, without bursting the boiler.”
—Georges Bernanos (18881948)