Charity No: 312507
CHARITY EDUCATION GRANTS FOR CHILDREN AND YOUNG PEOPLE OF FINSBURY, SOUTH ISLINGTON
The proper name of the charity is The Worrall and Fuller Exhibition Fund. The word ‘Exhibition’ is an old English term for a bursary and scholarship paid to a school student. The Charity was founded by the amalgamation in 1879 of two ancient charitable gifts of Mr William Worrall in 1689 and Mr John Fuller in 1723
In his will dated 20th December 1689, William Worrall left ‘the great room and one pair of stairs in the…house in French Alley wherein I now dwell to be a Free School and the rest of that house to be enjoyed by the Schoolmaster’. The school he founded was also bequeathed £2000 to buy land to endow it and was still going as late as the mid-1800s. The master was to be paid £30 per year and 40 boys were to be taught at no cost to them. The first school master is recorded as Simon Cooke. Boys who were to benefit from this free education were to be poor and from St Giles’ Parish, Cripplegate. The boys scholars were to be clothed every other year with “Caps, coats, breeches, hose and shoes of orange colour”. William Worrall was a plasterer, a highly skilled trade.
The money left by William Worrall was used to purchase Moor Hall Farm in Ninfield, East Sussex in 1693. Although most of it was sold off over time, even today the charity still owns a field which it rents out to provide a small part of our income.
In his will of 14th May 1723, John Fuller bequeathed £1600 which was used to buy farm land at Fisher's Farm, Waltham Holy Cross for the benefit of boys living in the Lordship part of St Giles’ Cripplegate (now St Luke, Old Street). Bursaries were to be awarded to up to 24 boys aged between 7 and 10 years in one of the Charity Schools in the area. The boys were to be given schooling, clothing and then put out to apprentice.
In 1881 the Charity Commission authorised the Trustees of Worrall’s Free School, as Lords of the Manor of Moor Hall in the County of Sussex to sell various portions of land situated in Ninfield.
The charity’s current constitution was made on 20th March 1956 by the Minister of Education.