St Thomas Aquinas Church, Ham

St Thomas Aquinas Church, Ham is a Roman Catholic church on Ham Street on the western corner of Ham Common, Ham, in the London Borough of Richmond upon Thames. The church is a former 19th-century school building, acquired in 1974 and converted for worship and community use.ServicesMass is held on Saturday evenings and on Sunday mornings.There is also a mass in German on Sunday mornings to accommodate the local German-speaking population. (There is a German school nearby in Petersham.) The German-speaking congregation also meets with the Lutheran German-speaking congregation at St Andrew's Church, Ham for ecumenical services.HistorySchoolThe building was constructed as Ham School in the late 1880s, replacing an earlier village school funded by the National Society. This early school accommodated boys in St Andrew's Church on the opposite side of Ham Common, and girls in the converted first floor of nearby almshouses. This failed to meet the new standards required by the Elementary Education Act 1870. Faced with the unpopular prospect of having a state controlled Board school imposed upon them, local ratepayers established a committee to construct a new school. Funds were raised from local charities, subscriptions and the National Society and the building opened in 1890 as St Andrew's School. Built with capacity for 100 boys, 101 infants and 101 girls, the school remained open until 1966, when it was replaced by the larger St Richard's with St Andrew's Primary School. The building was used for various community functions throughout the late 1960s and early 1970s.