GRAVESEND SCHOOL OF ART
Officially the Municipal Technical School and School of Art, Gravesend School of Art was officially opened in 1893 by Princess Beatrice of Battenberg, a daughter of Queen Victoria and a competent artist in her own right. Its first head teacher was Essex-born James Thomas Dalladay, (1860-1941) who had already been teaching art classes locally in Gravesend for about five years. Within a year the school had recruited 150 full and part-time students and in 1904 Kent County Council took responsibility for what was now the Gravesend School of Art but by the outbreak of the First World War, the numbers of both male and female students had dwindled considerably and by the end of the war, there were just 14 full-time students none of whom were proficient enough to impress the school inspectors. James Dalladay retired in 1924 and was succeeded by William Ongley Miller (1883–1960) and with the help of his socially-minded wife Eva née Worsley (1889-1957), who married in 1912, the school intake had more than doubled within three years of his appointment. Miller retired at the end of 1948 when succeeded by Alan Tennant Moon (1914-2008) a graduate of the Royal College of Art. Gravesend School eventually succumbed to Kent County Council and Ministry of Education reforms and closed in 1957. Suffolk artists who studied at Gravesend include Annie Elizabeth Castley, George Chapman and Ernest Greenwood.