The Blackheath High story with Archive Club

Last term, I launched Archive Club for Senior School students, supported by a couple of A-level historians and Miss Blythe, one of our History teachers. It’s genuinely the highlight of my week – we all put on white gloves and open boxes, books and sheaves of paper to start the process of piecing together Blackheath High’s long and prestigious history. 

Our group has discovered for example, that what is now our Junior School at Wemyss Road, once housed a very smart statue of the Venus de Milo, but she was destroyed in a WWII bomb. We have seen the signature of BHS’s first Head Mistress, Miss Gadesden, in the school’s first ever OGA minutes, recorded in 1880. We have paraded around with hats from the 1960’s, complete with yellow and blue cockade, and admired a set of striped dresses in different colours from the same era, all purchased at DH Evans. 

We’ve also started to see what each Head Mistress brought to the school, from the feminist pioneer Miss Gadesden, after whom our Senior School Library is now named; to Miss Lewis who oversaw the school when it was evacuated to Tunbridge Wells for the duration of the Second World War and Miss Macauley who engineered the return back to Blackheath; to civic-minded Miss Wheatley who helped raise £30,000 for the building of the gym at Wemyss Road; to Mrs Laws, a familiar name to so many of our younger alumnae. 

I am currently rewriting BHS history for our new website, launching early next year. I have found some online sources, books in the archive and GDST artefacts – but your memories and knowledge will add so much colour. So I am calling on you to help! What do you know of the school’s history? Do you have photos to build a more vivid picture? Items to donate to the archive? Particularly artefacts – books, uniform, medals, anything to continue building our story. Email me your histories or send me your archive items to the Senior School.

- Karen, BHS Alumnae Manager