New Early Years classes in Battersea with funding from The Battersea Society

We are thrilled to have recently been awarded a grant of £5,000 from The Battersea Society, an organisation dedicated to celebrating Battersea’s past, supporting its present and promoting its future. This grant was managed by Sir Walter St. John’s Educational Charity which has generously funded us in the past, but this was a little bit special as the trust was managing legacy funding from Joan Brittain, a long-standing member of the Battersea Society.

Joan started the first Montessori nursery school in Battersea in 1960. She continued to run nursery schools well into the 1980s, becoming a passionate advocate of Early Years education. In her obituary, her son Richard recounts her profound legacy in SW11:

“Hardly a day passed when my late mother was alive when we would not bump into some of her former students in SW11 – or parents of her former students, and in due course children of her former students. She was an institution in SW11.”

We will be using this wonderful legacy to help fund our new Early Years’ work in Battersea, running our Early Years literacy classes at the Yvonne Carr and York Gardens Children’s Centres, providing free book packs for families who attend our classes, as well as subscriptions to Dolly Parton’s Imagination Library for 20 children.

Richard describes Joan as, “a great free-thinker and innovator, ahead of the curve in many fundamental developments that occurred within her life... including the campaign for nuclear disarmament, the value of educating women, the appreciation and preservation of our heritage and the nurturing of our environment.” We are honoured to be able to carry on her educational work, inspiring a new generation of nursery-aged children to learn to love to read.