The British and Foreign School Society (BFSS) Archive collection, a collection of international importance in documenting the history of elementary education and teacher training, was recently moved from Lancaster House, on the Osterley campus, to the Haywood Building on the Runnymede campus. The British and Foreign School Society have deposited the collection into the custody of the University. From 1951, the Runnymede campus was home to the Shoreditch College of Education, which became part of Brunel University in 1980.
The BFSS collection contains papers which document the establishment and administration of British and Foreign Schools throughout the world.
Until the mid-nineteenth century the schools operated under the monitorial system, a system of teaching conceived by Joseph Lancaster whereby the older and more able pupils, 'monitors' as they were called, taught the younger pupils and all were presided over by a Master or Mistress. Joseph Lancaster opened his first school in a room at his father's house in Southwark in 1798. At the turn of the 19th century, he opened a school in Borough Road, Southwark. This was the forerunner of Borough Road College, which moved to Osterley in 1889.
Amongst its many treasures, the BFSS collection contains correspondence of Joseph Lancaster dating from 1810. Other papers within the collection map the history of the BFSS teacher training colleges which were at Borough Road, Stockwell, Darlington, Saffron Walden, Bangor and Swansea.
For further information on the British and Foreign School Society collections, please consult the catalogue of collection contents at www.bfss.org.uk
The Haywood Building, situated on the Runnymede campus and formerly used as a library, has been refurbished and now accommodates the University’s Archive & Records Centre. The building, constructed in the late 1970s, has been named after the first Librarian, John Haywood, who began work for Shoreditch Training College in 1957. The refurbishment work means that the BFSS collection can be maintained in its own self-contained storage facility.
Work currently continues on the Heritage Lottery funded Heritage Builds Bridges Project, to sort, catalogue and re-pack two University collections, Maria Grey College and Shoreditch College of Education and to catalogue and re-pack the archives of the BFSS. The Maria Grey teacher training college merged with Borough Road College and Chiswick Polytechnic in 1976 to form the West London Institute of Higher Education, which merged with Brunel University in 1995.
Also as part of the Project a searchable website is under construction and a Reading Room has been established in the Haywood Building. The BFSS archive received its first visitor to Runnymede in April this year, a lecturer from Japan.
Recognised as a collection of great significance, the BFSS archive documents an important part of the history of education and its presence is a great asset to the archive collections held at Brunel University.
For further information on collections and visiting the archive please contact: 01784 436111, archives@brunel.ac.uk or bfss@brunel.ac.uk