The school premises erected in 1712 by means of the subscriptions to which allusion was just now made, was long one of the glories of Kensington. It was designed by Sir John Vanbrugh, the constructor of Blenheim Palace, and the fashionable architect of his time. Sir John was also known as a great and successful courtier, as well as a dramatic author and poet of somewhat doubtful reputation. Many of us are in a position to criticise from memory one at least of his works, viz., the front of these Kensington National Schools, which stood until removed to make way for the new Town Hall. There were figures of a charity boy and girl in the costume of the period decorating the front. Sir John Vanbrugh seems to have satisfied the taste not only of his own but of some succeeding generations with this building, for Faulkner, writing in 1820, speaks of it in terms of high praise, and makes a boast of Kensington possessing it, but I must confess I personally never admired it, and am far from regretting its destruction. Following on the recommendation of the committee of 1810, the charity was reconstructed. New schoolrooms were built, still behind Sir John’s front, which were first opened in June, 1818, on the National system of education which had been first established in the parish in 1809. In August, 1819, according to Faulkner, there were 140 boys and 100 girls in the school, the whole of whom were taught by one master and one mistress, without any assistants. Mark that, ye moderns! 70 girls were clothed, but only 12 boys. The children were all day scholars, the hours of attendance being from 9 to 12, and 2 to 5 on week-days, and on Sundays twice to church. I now come to the more modern history of the Charity. The older parishioners will remember the time when Archdeacon Sinclair was Vicar, and the interest he took in the matter of the parish schools. In my search for information on the subject I applied to the Rev. Wm. Wright, now Rector of Sutton, near Sandy, in Bedfordshire, who was for twenty years, from 1855 to 1875, senior Curate of Kensington under the Archdeacon, and who acted as secretary to the schools all that time, and he has been very kind in answering my questions. This is how Mr. Wright describes the schools:— “In 1855 there was next to the Vestry Hall and Churchyard a large room consisting of four walls, three of which were dead, _i.e._, skylight. “The room was divided by masonry and folding doors; on one side was a boys’ school and on the other a girls’ school. The building was hideous in the extreme, internally and externally. Adjoining was a residence for teachers, comfortless and miserable, but with a make-believe frontage to High Street of brick work which was admired by the ‘craft’ and the antiquarians, I should say. Behind this was a wretched schoolroom for infants abutting on Church Court. The whole lot of building save the frontage a miserable affair.