Thomas Tenison, an educational evangelist and later Archbishop of Canterbury, founded several schools in the late 17th and early 18th centuries. A boys’ school now at the Oval was founded in 1685 in the crypt of St Martin’s in the Fields and relocated by 1895 in Leicester Square on the site previously occupied by the Sabloniere Hotel.
The school moved to The Oval in 1928, with the new building being opened by the then Prince of Wales (later King Edward VIII). A girls’ school was formally established in 1706 for 12 girls and in 1863 a new school building was erected at 18 Lambeth High Street. The girls school closed in 1961, when it amalgamated with Archbishop Temple’s Boys School to form a mixed VA school. The building was used by Temple’s as a first-year annex from 1968 to 1974, when Archbishop Temple’s School closed. Archbishop Tenison founded another school in nearby Croydon in 1714.
Archbishop Tenison’s at The Oval became a grammar school, then a comprehensive. Tenison’s became a Grant-Maintained school in 1993, and a Voluntary-Aided School in 1998.
Archbishop Tenison’s School moved to The Oval in 1928
