Place Name
Emma Elizabeth Lawrence (1861 – January 17, 1929) was co-principal of the exclusive West Heath School for Girls from 1900 until 1928. The school was originally set up by the Reverend Philip Bennet Power and his wife, Emma, to teach their own daughters at their Abbey Wood home, West Heath House. The quality of the girls’ education attracted other local families to ask the Powers to teach their children and West Heath School opened in 1865. In 1879 it moved to 1 Ham Common, in what was then the agricultural community of Ham, Surrey. The house, set in over 10 acres of grounds, was the former residence of the Duc de Chartres. In 1890 Misses Sarah, Maria and Anna Buckland and Miss Jane Percival who owned a similar school in Reading joined forces with the ageing Mrs Power at Ham Common and they ran the school until its purchase in 1900 by Misses Emma Lawrence and Margaret Skeat. During her time at the school Elizabeth as she was better known played an active role in all local charitable and communal activities. Miss Elliott joined the staff in 1928 and was appointed Principal the following year. The development of nearby shops and housing prompted a second move, Ham having become “too suburbanised for a high class girls’ school”. In 1932 the school moved to its present site, the 18th-century Ashgrove House, near Sevenoaks. Diana, Princess of Wales, then Diana Spencer, attended the school from 1974 to 1977. In the 1990s the school ran into financial difficulties due to falling numbers of pupils, and it was placed into receivership in 1997. The Cassel Hospital now stands on the site of the old Ham school, the Elizabeth Lawrence Hall was built as a memorial to her.
