page_title: The Royal Masonic School for Girls
section_title: Battersea Rise ("Clapham J")
hierarchical_section_title: The Royal Masonic School for Girls / Location / Battersea Rise ("Clapham J")
caption_attribution_description: The girls of Alex house the royal masonic school 1966
context_page_description: The Royal Masonic School for Girls is an independent school in Rickmansworth, Hertfordshire, England, with both day and boarding pupils. The school was instituted in 1788, with the aim of maintaining the daughters of indigent Freemasons, unable through death, illness, or incapacitation to support their families. Since 1978, the school opened to the daughters of non-freemasons, and the name "Masonic" is a now just reference to its past.
  It began in 1789 with fifteen pupils and a Matron in Somers Town, St Pancras, Middlesex. During its history, the school has moved between premises three times, twice within London and finally in 1934 to Rickmansworth in Hertfordshire, where it still is today.
  The school occupies a 316-acre site in Rickmansworth Park. It is a day school for girls 4-18, a boarding school for girls 7-18 and since 2009 also a nursery opened in 2009 for boys and girls aged 2–4.
context_section_description: St John's Hill, Battersea Rise was the school's third location, although there seems to have been some confusion as to whether the school was in Battersea, Clapham, Wandsworth, or Putney when its address was written down.  The girls, however, referred to it as Clapham J.  In 1853, when the site was purchased, it was because of its wide open aspect and country air, qualities that would later be lost.  The school, however, was still expanding; and in 1918, the junior girls moved to a new junior school in Weybridge, Surrey.
caption: The girls of Alexandra house 1966
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