It was merged with Christ's College in 1978, and the buildings at Long Lane were demolished. Christ's College, Hendon Lane In 1857 the Rev Thomas Reader White, Rector of St Mary’s Finchley, opened Finchley Hall School, in Hendon Lane (next to the church, on the site of what used to be Church End Library) in what had been a local inn, the Queen's Head. The following year he had the stable block and the village "cage" removed and a new school built, to designs by Anthony Salvin. The school was an Anglican School, intended to provide a public school education at a reasonable rate. The school became popular, and a new building was constructed across the road in 1860, with money provided by White's brother who was a rich London merchant, and it was renamed Christ's College. The designs were by the architect Edward Roberts, and its main feature was a 120-foot tower, a local landmark. The school flourished as a private school during the 1860s and 1870s, when its Headmaster was the Rev T C Whitehead. It was under Whitehead that the school was first divided into four houses: North, South, East, and West. With the loss of its founder, then the self-styled Warden, to a disorder of the brain in 1877, the school went into decline. In 1902, the school was taken over by Middlesex County Council, as the first Middlesex County grammar school, but under John Tindal Phillipson, headmaster since 1895, attempts that were made to rename the school and change its character were resisted, and on the whole the transition was a smooth one. A rifle club was formed in 1904, which soon became a cadet corps. Until 1906 the school playing fields were directly behind St Mary’s church, but in 1906 new fields were acquired further down the hill, near to Dollis Brook. In 1927, the school increased in size with new buildings, and ceased to be an Anglican institution. In 1972, a new annexe for design and technology was built on land in East Finchley. As a county grammar the school had a strong academic reputation, particularly in the sciences, with many pupils continuing their education at Oxford and Cambridge universities. In 1990 the Hendon Lane (Upper School) site was closed and the school moved in its entirety to the East Finchley site. For some time the building was unused and it was proposed