Last Chance to Save Sarah Trimmer Hall

Deadline for planning application is this Monday

There are only a few days left to comment upon plans for redeveloping what is currently being called "Sarah Trimmer Hall". Revised proposals were placed on Hounslow Council's planning website on 29 January with a deadline for comment of 8 February.

The school room where Sarah Trimmer ran her industrial school for girls (teaching useful skills like spinning and needlework) as well as Sunday School classes would be partially demolished and converted in a destructive and inappropriate scheme creating 3 small "duplex apartments". Inserted partition walls and floors, changes to windows and new doorways would make it impossible to understand its original function.

The building retains its original character and should therefore be conserved both as a fabric and as a record of Sarah Trimmer herself.

See Mrs Trimmer's School (pdf) for an account of The School and Sarah Trimmer, by Val Bott and James Wisdom, on behalf of the Brentford and Chiswick Local History Society, October 2015

St George's church and Trimmer Hall

Sarah Trimmer was an important figure in the history of national educational reform.  Sarah was active in the Sunday School movement and in founding schools for the poor. She also gave birth to 12 children.

Local historian Val Bott contacted the Director of Regeneration, Economic Development and Environment, Brendon Walsh, at the beginning of January to ask what was happening and to emphasise how important the building is, but received no response until she also contacted the Leader of the Council.

"At a time when Brentford is changing rapidly it really matters that we preserve those things which remind us that it is a town with a proud history", said Val Bott, "and I hope local people will object most strongly now. The building could be profitably converted into an elegant single home, retaining its lofty central hall with upper rooms at each end of the building if only the developers took advice from an experienced conservation architect".

The Brentford Community Council wrote in their objection "The three separate units proposed once again by IDM will effectively destroy the building leaving little more than a façade from the original building.

"The Trimmer School has an unusual and fascinating history and is thought by historians to be the last - or one of the last - industrial schools in England of its time. Please do not let it go the way of the rest of Brentford High Street whose destruction was approved by the Council in the 1950’s!"

Comments on 00607/367/P13 & 00607/367/L1 should be sent to natalie.lynch@hounslow.gov.uk

February 8, 2016