Newington Green School's Plaque to Mary Wollstonecraft

Newington Green School

On the centenary of International Women's Day, 8 March 2011, the London Borough of Islington put up a Green Plaque to Mary Wollstonecraft on Newington Green Primary School, as it is situated close to the site of Mary Wollstonecraft's school for girls.

Wollstonecraft, one of the first campaigners for women's rights, opened the girls' school in 1784 and ran it with her sister Eliza and her friend Fanny Blood. The school was in one of the buildings that overlooked the Green but this was demolished some long time ago and the exact whereabouts is unknown.

Wollstonecraft's ideas about education went against the customs of the time, which sent boys to boarding schools and universities, whilst girls received minimal education, at home. These ideas were discussed in her first published book, which she wrote whilst at Newington Green: 'Thoughts on the Education of Daughters'  and were developed further in her most famous book ' A Vindication of the Rights of Woman'.

'This train of reasoning brings me back to.... the necessity of establishing proper day-schools. But these should be national establishments.... (and) the natural inference is drawn which I have had in view throughout - that to improve both sexes they ought, not only in private families, but in public schools, to be educated together.'

A Vindication of the Rights of Woman (1792) ~ Mary Wollstonecraft

Photo: Nicky Southin