Ragged School Museum in Mile End wins £4.3m lottery grant

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The Ragged School Museum which is located on Copperfield Road near Mile End Stadium has won a £4.3m grant to help with restoration.

Originally Dr Barnardo’s Copperfield Road Ragged School, the museum was opened in 1990 on its premises. The school opened in 1877 to serve the children of Mile End with a basic education.

The school was the largest of its kind at the time but was closed in 1908 when states schools had been established. The building was later use as a factory.

Heritage Lottery Fund will pay a £4.3m grant for repair work on historic building that provided free education.

Parts of the Ragged School Museum building including badly leaking roofs are in such a poor state that they are practically unusable.

At its peak the school had more than 1,000 pupils on weekdays and 2,400 pupils on Sunday.

Erica Davies, director of the museum said “The Ragged School Museum is a witness to the movement for universal free education, and a tribute to the men and women who struggled to achieve it”.

Source: Guardian