According to David Shavreen, writing in the Brentford and Chiswick Local History Journal 9 (2000) in an article 'Early Education For The Poor Of New Brentford'
 
The National School
In the early 19th century, the Napoleonic Wars were raging and social dislocation and poverty were on the increase. Along the main road to the west the forlorn train of discharged sailors and soldiers, their wives and children, grew more demanding and finally, when the wars ended, the country, so far from rejoicing, was in the throes of riot and disorder brought about by the passing of the controversial Corn Laws. To avoid revolution Henry Brougham, one of the ministers of the Government, urged the development of a national system of education that, at least, would get poor children off the streets. In 1811 the National Society for Promoting the Education of the Poor in the Principles of the Established Church had been founded as part of the growing effort to provide through education a means of dealing with the perceived threat to the stability of the nation. The moving spirit behind the new venture locally was the Vicar of Ealing, the Reverend Coulson Carr, who applied to Colonel Clitherow, the Lord of the Manor, in 1817 for a grant of land on the Ham for erecting a school for boys, to serve the whole township of Brentford, and this was duly granted. The foundation stone, still in place, however claims that the school was actually erected in 1815.