Founded in 1813, the London Orphan Asylum’s mission was to provide maintenance, instruction and clothing to destitute orphans, and to give them the prospect of an honest livelihood.

The Asylum was the result of increasing awareness of impoverished children. During this period, the government provided no financial support for parentless children, apart from the dreaded workhouse. Education was provided in workhouses but teachers were poorly paid and often had no formal training.

Andrew Reed, one of the leading philanthropists of his day, established the Asylum in order to help increasing numbers of orphans.

Reed studied theology at Hackney Academy and was ordained minister of New Road Chapel in 1811. He visited America and received a degree from Yale. In addition to an account of his visit to America, he compiled a hymn book and published sermons and books of devotion.

Reed drew on his wide circle of contacts – members of his church congregation, city merchants, and even royalty – to raise thousands of pounds towards the Asylum. The List of Subscribers for the Asylum attests to Reed’s formidable persuasive powers: it runs to 97 pages.

The Asylum was a response to a fear that orphans, without careful guidance, were likely to end up leading a life of vice and crime.

However, the Asylum exercised prejudice against children from certain social backgrounds. The initial report stated that it only assisted children ‘descending from respectable parents’ and also insisted that their parents must have been married.

When it first opened, the Asylum was based in East London. Initially it consisted of two houses, one in Shoreditch for the boys and one in Bethnal Green for the girls.

By 1820, this accommodation was declared inadequate, so the school was relocated to eight acres of land in Clapton.

However, the board of managers was forced to consider moving the school to a new site after a typhoid epidemic killed 15 children in 1866.

After much deliberation, they fixed upon Watford as being a healthy town fit for the raising of disadvantaged children, and a site of 36 acres near Watford Junction was purchased. The foundation stone was laid by the Prince of Wales, later Edward VII, and his wife, the future Queen Alexandra, in 1869.

After the school’s move to Watford, the East London buildings were used by the Salvation Army. The three day lying in state of the organisation’s founder, William Booth, occurred there in 1912. Now, only the façade of the building remains.

The new school in Watford opened in 1871. It was renamed the London Orphan School in 1915, and in 1939 its name was changed again to Reed’s School in honour of its founder.

At the outset, there were 450 children in residence. This increased gradually to 500, as reported in the Watford Observer in 1906, when it was announced that more voluntary funds were required to sustain the high standards of the institution. The paper also reported that upwards of 9,300 children had benefited from the charitable organisation so far.

When war broke out in September, 1939, the boys were evacuated to Devon while the girls were sent to Northampton. The premises of the Asylum were occupied as a military hospital throughout the remainder of the war.

After the war the governors decided not to return to the school at Watford, which the government in any case wished to retain as headquarters for the Ministry of Labour.

The school was once again split into two, with one site near Basingstoke purchased for the girls, and another in Surrey for the boys.

Financial difficulties made it impossible to maintain both schools and the girls’ school was closed in 1955, so all the resources could be concentrated on Surrey, where Reed’s School, now a highly respected institution, remains today.

By the late 1990s, the site of the school in Watford had become a mixture of industrial units, residential apartments and office blocks. The neo-Gothic buildings achieved Listed II status, some of which were converted into homes.

Two of the residential streets, Orphanage Road and Reed’s Crescent, carry reminders of the school that once stood there.