Records of George Green's School, Poplar

The collection consists of pupils, staffing, governors, financial head teachers and miscellaneous records.

<span class="wrapper"><p>For a detailed history of the school see:- Wilks, Henry C. George Green's School, 1828-1978, A History (Edward Arnold, 1979), a copy of which is held in the Local History Library. The Library also hold a considerable amount of material in the way of school magazines, prospectuses and cuttings, etc.</p> <p>Other records of the school, including earlier admission registers and governors' minutes are held at the London Metropolitan Archives.</p></span>

The records were presented by the school to the Local History Library and Archives in 1993. They cover the period 1883-1976.

George Green (1767-1849), the famous shipbuilder of the Blackwall Yard endowed a number of schools in Poplar. The forerunner of the present George Green's School was founded in 1828 when Green purchased a site in Chrisp Street, at its junction with East India Dock Road, from Elizabeth Chrisp Willis, on which he immediately had built an infant school. Subsequently this site was extended and provided boys and girls schools with an associated infants school in Prestons Road.

In the decade following the Education Act of 1870, the schools seemed increasingly inadequate both because of the constraints of size and because their continued provision of elememtary education, which was becoming widely available through schools provided by the School Board for London, seemed a limited use of their endowment. Consequently the Charity Commissioners agreed that the schools' trustees should establish a "middle class" school giving a wider secondary-style education. The Chrisp Street Schools closed in December 1881 and a larger site was acquired in East India Dock Road and a new school, designed by Sir John Sulman, opened in 1884.

In 1910 the school was taken over by the London County Council. In 1968 it was decided that the school should change from being a grammar to a comprehensive school and move to a new site in Manchester Road on the Isle of Dogs. This was opened in 1976.