Our History

Pioneering Education

Where Platanos College stands today has a long history of pioneering education which you as Alumni can be proud of.

The site is world-famous for housing the Stockwell Orphanage, founded by the celebrated preacher, philanthropist and vocal opponent of slavery, Charles Haddon Spurgeon, in 1869. With a donation of £20,000 from widow Mrs Anne Hillyard, a member of his congregation, Spurgeon built the orphanage in an open, healthy place by the Clapham Road and ran it on humane and generous principles for 500 boys and girls who had lost a parent, providing food, clothes, good accommodation, and a sound education. The Orphanage remained on the Stockwell site until World War War Two when the school moved to Kent for safety.

The site was earmarked in 1953 as suitable for a new school which was opened in 1960, a modern design based on a seven-storey tower block, one of the “glass palaces” as they were described, as an important part of the post-war rebuilding of modern Britain. Stockwell Manor Secondary School is still remembered fondly by many of its Alumni.

The school buildings were added to and was able to take more pupils by 1975 when it became Stockwell Park Secondary School and in 2000 Stockwell Park High School.By 2012 Platanos College came into being, occupying award-winning new premises from 2009, with a design influenced by pupils, staff and parents aimed at fulfilling the needs of a twenty first century education