Minchenden

Abstract

Minchenden Grammar School was in suburban outer London, beyond the London County Council’s administrative area in the County of Middlesex (the education authority) and in the borough of Southgate, but effectively in London in terms of transport, employment, and other criteria.¹ Southgate was a largely middle-class community, home to a relatively prosperous, albeit mixed, population. During the interwar years Southgate had experienced substantial housing development, especially with the extension of the Piccadilly Line underground railway in 1933.² The borough’s population continued rising in mid-century as a result of wartime and postwar population dispersal from inner-city areas, thereafter remaining unchanged over the next decade. Southgate was well connected to central London through underground, rail, and—until 1961—trolleybus services.³ The fathers of many Minchenden pupils “went up to London” each day to work in white-collar office jobs. In 1955, the Mayor of Southgate reflected that the borough “has grown from what some of our residents knew as a rural area, to a suburb which is second to none in its set up.”⁴ The Council prided it self on sensitive town planning and provision of many parks, playground s, and other recreational facilities, where organized activities included gramophone recitals, fishing competitions, and tennis tournaments.⁵ Teachers at Minchenden sought to instill pupils with a sense of local civic pride through instruction in the workings of local democracy by regular visits to Council meetings.