Linden Lodge School
| Established | 1902 |
|---|---|
| Type | Community special school |
| Principal | Roger Legate OBE |
| Vice Principal | Deborah Rix |
| Location |
61 Princes Way Wimbledon Park, London SW19 6JB  EnglandCoordinates: 51°26′38″N 0°12′47″W / 51.4439°N 0.2131°W |
| Local authority | Wandsworth |
| DfE URN | 101093 Tables |
| Ofsted | Reports |
| Students | 142 |
| Gender | Coeducational |
| Ages | 2–19 |
| Houses | Mole, Beverley and Wandle |
| Colours | |
| Architect | Sir Edwin Lutyens |
| Architectural style | Mock Tudor |
| Website | www |
Linden Lodge School for the Blind is a specialist sensory and physical college located in Wimbledon, South London. It educates visually impaired children aged between two and nineteen, including those who are multi-disabled visually impaired.
The school was one of two residential schools for blind children opened by the London School Board in 1902. Initially for boys only, the original location of the school was at Wandsworth Common. The present main school building was designed by the architect Sir Edwin Lutyens in 1934.
The school's original building at 26 Bolingbroke Grove (known as Linden Lodge) on the east side of Wandsworth Common had been designed in 1876 by the architect E R Robson as a private residence for a retired headmistress, Marjory Peddie. On Peddie's death in 1879, the building was purchased by the School for the Indigent Blind, then located at St George's Fields, Southwark, which opened a school for junior pupils. In 1902, the entire school (including the elementary department) moved to Leatherhead, Surrey and the house was put up for sale again. The building was subsequently taken over by the London School Board and Linden Lodge School (as it is still known today) opened on 10 December 1902. The school educated around fifty blind boys aged between 13 and 16, of whom around forty were boarders. A similar school for visually impaired girls was opened at Elm Court in West Norwood in June of the same year.
During the Second World War the children of both schools were evacuated away from London. The boys returned to Bolingbroke Grove in 1945, however Elm Court School had suffered considerable bomb damage during the Blitz and it was not practical for the girls to resume their education there. After several years at temporary locations in both Brighton and Sunningdale, the girls were moved to North House in Wimbledon (now the main school site) and from 1949 onwards Linden Lodge operated as a single coeducational school split between two locations, under the control of one headmaster: The junior boys and girls (up to the age of ten) were both housed and taught at the North House site, whilst the senior girls were transported by bus each morning to join the older boys for lessons on the Bolingbroke Grove site. (North House had been designed by Sir Edwin Lutyens in 1934 for Robert Wilson Black, a partner of the Estate Agents firm Knight & Co. and a local hotelier.). In 2006 Sprunt Architects extensively refurbished the original Lutyens House, designed a new residential building for the students and restored the original Gertrude Jekyll garden.
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Wikipedia