Lycée Français Charles De Gaulle

Story

The Lycée Français Charles de Gaulle, usually referred to as the Lycée or the French Lycée, is a French co-educational primary and secondary independent day school, wholly owned by the French Government, and situated in South Kensington in the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea, London. It includes three primary school satellites: André Malraux (Ealing), Marie d'Orliac (Fulham), Wix (Clapham), and the associated Collège Français Bilingue de Londres (CFBL) (Kentish Town). There is also a British Section, which students can join in year 10.HistoryEarly yearsThe school was founded as the "French School of London", largely through the efforts of Marie d'Orliac, with backing from the University of Lille for Belgian and other francophone World War I refugees in 1915 near London's Victoria station and provided a full education for 120 students. In 1920, the renamed Lycée Français de Londres relocated to Cromwell Gardens, opposite the Victoria and Albert Museum. In the late 1930s it moved again to a Neo-Georgian style purpose-built school building (AJ Thomas, assistant to EL Lutyens), adjacent to the French Institute in Queensberry Place – another d'Orliac project – with its own entrance in Queensberry Mews. WWII saw the Lycée evacuate to Cumberland. The aesthetics displayed in the architecture of Patrice Bonnet's 1939 French Institute were translated into small touches like the Art Deco designs of the termly "Tableau d'honneur" cards, (the roll of honour) given to pupils deemed to have worked hard. The designs became utilitarian in the fifties.