School for Indigent Blind
History
The school was founded in 1799 by four philanthropists: London banker Samuel Bosanquet, Thomas Boddington, James Ware (an eye surgeon), and William Houlston (a charity worker). Its original name was The School for the Indigent Blind, and it was established at St George's Fields, Southwark with the intention of educating young blind people and teaching them useful trades.
At first, it was housed in the former Dog and Duck tavern. In 1800 fifteen pupils were housed and instructed in the Long Room. A year or so later the school, with thirty-five male and seventeen female pupils, expanded into the tavern and its gardens.[4] The building was demolished in 1812 to make way for the Bethlem Hospital; the site is now used by the Imperial War Museum within Geraldine Mary Harmsworth Park. Two acres of ground were allotted at the end of Blackfriars Road and a plain school-house for the blind was built. In 1834 additional ground was purchased and the school-house remodelled in the Tudor or domestic Gothic style with a tower and gateway, designed by John Newman.
From the 1860s, it was thought that the school should be moved to "another site more contributive to the health of the inmates and the advantage of the Charity".[10] In 1900, the school committee purchased 15 acres of land in Leatherhead at a cost of £4,000 and C. Pemberton Leach was appointed as architect. Work began on the new school building in May 1901 and the foundation stone was laid by Princess Helena on 13 November.
King George V granted the school royal patronage in 1911, and it was renamed The Royal School for the Blind. It consisted of residential workshops and when the Second World War began it was requisitioned by King's College Hospital as a national emergency hospital.