Dame Alice Owen’s School

It is one of the oldest schools in the UK. It was founded in Finsbury Islington as a boys school for 30 students in 1613.
The school is named after its founder the 17th-century philanthropist Alice Owen. I will be doing another post about Alice Owen in more detail.
The school was rebuilt and a new almshouse was built in 1841 on a new site in Owen Street, Finsbury Islington (near their previous location), at a cost of about £6,000, because the old buildings had fallen into disrepair, the original buildings were demolished.

Over time, the boys school expanded. A girls school was built in 1886, and the two schools were merged in 1973; the mixed school moved to its current location in Potters Bar in stages between 1973 and 1976.

During the WW2 the pupils were evacuated to Bedford, the school was used as a shelter however it experienced bomb damage. The girls school was mostly destroyed by bombing in 1940 and had to be rebuilt which was carried out in the early 1960s.
On 15 October 1940, 143 people were sheltering in the basement when a parachute mine hit the building, causing a pipe to flood the basement and killing 109 of the occupants.
A memorial to the people who died in the bombing was unveiled in 2005 at City and Islington College at the former site of Dame Alice Owen's School's playground.

The school is often referred to as Owen’s and is now situated in Potters Bar Hertfordshire the reason the school decided to move were for two reasons a decline of pupils in the area, and restrictions of the site. The former boys school building has now been demolished and the girls school building is now part of City and Islington College.

The school today, is mixed and is a partially selective secondary school and sixth form with academy status. It is part of the Dame Alice Owen's Foundation; its trustees are The Worshipful Company of Brewers. The school has maintained many traditions from the time of its founding, such as the giving of a small amount of "beer money" to every pupil. This is a reminder of the school's long-standing close association with the brewing industry and the Worshipful Company of Brewers.

Today the school is one of the highest performing state schools in England and Wales in terms of GCSE & A-Level results, and is widely considered one of the best schools in the UK. In 2016, it was named the State Secondary School of the Year by ‘The Sunday Times’ in the newspaper's rankings for the 2016–17 school year. ‘The Daily Telegraph’ & ‘Tatler’ magazine have also strongly praised it.

I have included some photos of the school and a map of the location it was once situated in Owen’s street Finsbury.