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The Royal Victoria Trust was established in 1985, following the closure of the Royal Victoria School, Benwell, Newcastle upon Tyne. The chairman at the time, Mr Bill Stafford, assisted by other members of the school’s Board of Governors, invested the funds from the sale of the premises wisely.
They began granting money to visually impaired children and young people for the purchase of much-needed equipment or the pursuit of social activities. Over the years the Trust has expanded its work, and now supports visually impaired adults as well as children, not through individual awards but through the local voluntary organisations in the area who work directly with people with sight loss.
In 1838, at a public meeting in Newcastle’s Guildhall, It was decided that a fund would be set up to build an asylum in the city for the blind rather than celebrate the coronation of Queen Victoria. In 1841 premises were found on Northumberland street, to be known as the Royal Victoria Asylum.
Young people were instructed in music as well as religious studies and practical skills. In 1890 it was realised that the asylum was occupying a prime business site in the centre of town, so the committee decided to purchase larger, more suitable premises outside the city, namely Benwell Dene house and grounds.
In 1895 the name of the institution was changed to the Royal Victoria school for the blind, and a more conventional curriculum was developed. Children were taught “the three R’s”, as well as music, crafts and physical education. Within six years the children were following the same curriculum as all other elementary schools.
The school, alongside training facilities and workshops for adult blind people continued to develop, and between 1921 and 1923 more buildings and land were purchased. From October 1939 to December 1945 children from the school were evacuated to Witherslack Hall in Westmorland, although the adult residents remained at Benwell.
The Butler Act of 1944 altered the status of many schools in the country, and within three years the Royal Victoria School received approval as a primary school only. The buildings used for the adult trainees and workers were gradually sold, and the school expanded to include infants, pre-school and deaf/blind children.
In 1978 the governing body dropped “for the Blind” from the school name to reflect the range of visual impairments among the children. At the same time, a programme of modernisation was carried out to provide more classrooms as well as improved residential facilities, at a cost of half a million pounds.
This expansion, however, was short-lived. In 1983 the Department for Education and Science proposed that visually impaired children should be educated in small units in mainstream schools near to their homes.
Although this initiative was not suitable for all the children, within two years numbers had reduced to such a level that the governors were obliged to take the painful decision to close the school in July 1985.
Since then, the Royal Victoria Trust continues to support local blind and visually impaired people through grant-giving to qualifying organisations and groups, in the school’s original catchment area of Tyne and Wear, Wearside, Teesside, Northumberland, Cumbria and North Yorkshire.
