The site is now occupied by Saint Francis Xavier 6th Form College (SFX)[1] and Newton Preparatory School.

In the course of the nineteenth century the Catholic population of England grew rapidly, largely through Irish immigration.

In 1850 a diocesan structure was restored and one of the most urgent concerns of the new hierarchy was to make provision for religious education.

The Xaverians were the first teaching brothers to make a permanent establishment in England in 1848 when they founded an elementary school in Bury near Manchester.

[4] The founding of Clapham College in 1897 was part of a wave of Catholic school building in the second half of the nineteenth century.

The school's patron saint was St Joseph and its motto was Concordia res parvae crescunt ('In harmony, small things grow').

The school increased in scale and scope and in 1905 a chemistry laboratory was built and the playing fields at Norbury acquired.

This amalgamation was in line with the general move towards comprehensive education and the RC dioceses reacting to an expected fall in pupil numbers after the baby boom.

Modern buildings to accommodate the new school were completed in 1975, on what had been the playing fields at the back of the ‘old’ Clapham College.

These were the site of the recently closed Notre Dame Convent School for Girls on Battersea Park Road and the I.L.E.A.

Classes moved from Raywood Street when space became available at the 'main' Notre Dame site as the older pupils left and the numbers dwindled.

The St. Francis Xavier Sixth-Form College now occupies the Nightingale Lane site (though its entrance is on Malwood Road).

It offers an education to those aged 16–19 and gives priority to students from the eight Catholic secondary schools in the Boroughs of Lambeth, Southwark and Wandsworth (Bishop Thomas Grant, John Paul II, La Retraite, Notre Dame, St Michael's, St Thomas the Apostle, Sacred Heart, and Salesian).

I went to Clapham College Grammar School, a bit of a dump with the appearance of quality, where I learned a great deal but very little that helps one pass exams.