Samuel and Henrietta Barnett

The school called 'Hen Barn' by generations of irreverent local girls is named after its founder, Dame Henrietta Barnett (1851-1936), who also founded Hampstead Garden Suburb, and saved Hampstead Heath Extension from development by Eton College. But that is a tiny part of the Barnetts' achievements.

The Revd Samuel Barnett (1844-1913) was an Oxford-trained curate at St Mary's, Bryanston Square, when he met Octavia Hill, and through her Henrietta Rowland, whom he married in 1873. In the same year, he was appointed to the parish of St Jude's, Whitechapel, described by its bishop as the worst in the diocese.

The Barnetts believed passionately in better education and childcare for the poor, and in bringing the benefits of culture and nature within their reach. This was the thinking behind Toynbee Hall, earliest of the university settlements which brought young graduates to work in the slums, and behind the Whitechapel Art Gallery, the Children's Country Holiday Fund, and of course Hampstead Garden Suburb. But a full list of the Barnetts' foundations and activities would fill this magazine. A contemporary wrote that 'his rare spiritual gifts, fine mind, and sensitive nature were joined with Mrs. Barnett's robust energy and assertive personality.'

Samuel left St Jude's in 1894 on becoming a canon of Bristol, and later was canon and then sub-dean of Westminster Abbey. After his death, Henrietta went on working energetically for over 20 years: at the age of 72 she took up painting, and had a picture hung in the Royal Academy. She was made a DBE in 1924, and died in Hampstead in 1936.

Charles Plouviez