History Timeline: 1808 : 1815 : 1903 : 1996
1815 - 1903 The Asylum and the Road
Following its incorporation the Guardians started the long process of finding a site for the Asylum. In March 1819 the first six boys were elected and six good London women were paid a shilling (5p in today's currency) a week to care for them.
The first Asylum was opened in December 1819 in Hatton Garden and was replaced in 1826 by a newly built Asylum in Copenhagen Fields, Islington. It remained there for 77 years and lent it's name to the "Caledonian Road".
Children in a Caley school room
Initially the scholars were all boys but in 1844, following some alterations, a space was found in the Asylum for a new school for girls.
In 1852 Her Majesty Queen Victoria became Patron and the Asylum was renamed the Royal Caledonian Schools, although legally it was and still is the "Caledonian Asylum". Royal patronage has continued since then.
When the Asylum was built in 1826 Islington was a quiet little village but by the end of the century things had changed. On 12 December 1901 the London Correspondent of the Aberdeen Daily Chronicle wrote:
"The Immediate neighbourhood is not pleasant. Cheek by jowl with the Asylum sits Pentonville Prison whose precincts have been darkened by the worse criminals the nation affords, and around it gathers the scum of all the nation on earth. Indeed one might walk the whole length of the Caledonian Road from Kings Cross to Holloway and Holloway again for a day and see nothing that his eye could rest on with pleasure except perhaps the "weel-faured" faces of the boys and girls of the Asylum in their dainty highland dresses."
Topping out ceremony at Bushey
Concerns like this had already lead to the Directors deciding to find a new site. By the end of 1897 they had decided to move to Bushey in Hertfordshire. Eventually after various appeals £37,400 was raised and the new schools project was up and moving. Part of the money came from the London County Council who purchased the old Asylum for £16,000, demolished it and built flats. These flats still remain and our history is remembered on the gates which are adorned with thistles.