The school was built in 1892 and opened in 1893 with 71 pupils enrolled. The site marked a division between the industrial area of Woolwich and the people of ‘The Hill’. In 1909 the headmaster accused the rival Greenwich Public School of poaching students by providing additional facilities. In 1910 a flagpole was provided to fly a donated flag sent from the original Woolwich, a working class dockyard district near London.  In the 1940s children from Cockatoo Island and Goat Island came by ferry and walked to the Woolwich school from Margaret Street wharf. The school closed in 1988. It is now the site of retirement accommodation.