Christ's College, Finchley

Christ's College is a secondary school in East Finchley, London, United Kingdom. It falls under the London Borough of Barnet Local Education Authority. It is a boys' school up to and including Year 11, and the sixth form is mixed. The school presently has 967 students.

Motto and Badge

The school badge since 1906 has been a combination of the three scimitars of the old county of Middlesex and a finch over an oak tree, the old unofficial arms of the Urban District of Finchley. The Motto, since March 1906, is Usque Proficiens meaning "advance all the way".

History

The history of the contemporary Christ’s College has its roots in two different schools. The senior is Chapel Street School, later Alder School, and the junior is Finchley Hall School, later Christ’s College.

Alder School Badge, the tree is an Alder Tree, but the hunting horns are taken from Borough of Finchley's coat of arms

===Alder School, Long Lane=== A British School in Chapel Street East Finchley was opened by local Congregationalists in 1842, but in 1876 fire destroyed the original build, and the new building became in turn Finchley’s first Board School in 1881. East Finchley grew rapidly in the 1880s, and the Finchley School Board decided to build a new building in Long Lane which was opened in 1884, with the staff and pupils being moved to the new premises at the end of that year. In 1931 the school opened a secondary wing and was renamed Alder School, after a chairman of Finchley’s Education committee. It was organised into three school houses, Rangers, Archers, and Foresters. In 1944 it became a mixed Secondary Modern School, and an all boys school in 1958. The school was seen as providing a necessary education for skilled workers in the light engineering works of Hendon, Finchley and Barnet, and was well thought of. It was merged with Christ's College in 1978 and the buildings at Long Lane were demolished.

===Christ's College, Hendon Lane=== In 1857 the Revd. Thomas Reader White, Rector of St Mary’s Finchley opened Finchley Hall School, in Hendon Lane (on the site of Church End Library) in what had been a local inn, The Queen's Head. The following year he had the stable block, and the village "cage", removed and a new school built to designs by Anthony Salvin. The school was an Anglican School intended to provide a public school education at a reasonable rate. The school became popular and a new building was constructed by across the road in 1860, with money provided by White's brother who was a rich London Merchant, and renamed Christ's College. The school flurished as a private school during the 1860s and 1870s, when its Headmaster was the Rev T C Whitehead. It was under Whitehead that the school was first divided into four houses: North, South, East, and West. With the loss of its founder, then the self styled Warder, to a disorder of the brain in 1877 the school went into decline. In 1902 the school was taken over by the Middlesex County Council, as the first Middlesex County grammar school, but under Philipson, headmaster since 1895, attempts made to rename the school and change its character were resisted, and on the whole the transition was a smooth one. A rifle club was formed in 1904, which soon became a cadet corp. Until 1906 the school playing fields were directly behind St Mary’s church but in 1906 new fields were acquired further down the hill near to Dollis Brook. In 1927 the school increased in size with building of new buildings, and ceased to be an Anglican institution. In 1972 a new annex, for design and technology, was built on land in East Finchley. As a county grammar the school had a strong academic reputation, particularly in the sciences, with many pupils continuing their education at Oxford and Cambridge.

===Christ's College, East End Road=== With the foundation of the present school in 1978 the school was split into the, older upper school, which used the Hendon Lane site, and the lower at new school. The whole school moved to the new site in 1991. In 2002 Mr O'Shea expanded the sixthform with the introduction of girls. Christs College has in the past few years become a specialist in Mathematics and Computing school which means that the school receives additional funds for investment in the Mathematics and Computing departments.

Notable alumni of Christ College and Alder School

File:J Sacks.jpg

Jonathan Sacks

Famous alumni of Alder School include Ray Lovegrove, producer of The Kinks, and Andre Jacquemin [1]producer for a number of the musical scenes for the comedy team Monty Python including: The Lumberjack Song and Always Look on the Bright Side of Life from the film the Life of Brian. Famous alumni of the old Christ College include: Richard Desmond founder of Asian Babes and proprietor of the Daily Express, Harry Hooton Australian Poet and Philosopher, Charles John Monro, the man who introduced Rugby Union to New Zealand, Charles Saatchi, Art connoisseur and poster designer. Jonathan Sacks, Chief Rabbi of Great Britain, and Will Self, journalist and writer, Raymond Park [2], stuntman and actor who has starred in Stars Wars 1 - Phantom Menace as Darth Maull, X-Men and also worked as a stunt man in sleepy hollow, street fighter. Stephen Richards political corespondant.

External links

• League table entry for this school, BBC News website.
• Ofsted data for this school, Ofsted website.
• School Website
• Cadet Website
• The Old Finchleians (Old Boy's Club) Founded in 1904.
• The Old Cadets Association (C.R.A.)