THE 400th anniversary of John Milton's birth this year provides a happy opportunity for a name for the new primary schools complex in Finsbury due to open in April.

THE 400th anniversary of John Milton's birth this year provides a happy opportunity for a name for the new primary schools complex in Finsbury due to open in April.

The John Milton Schools or a variation has a certain ring to it as an umbrella title, I'm inclined to think. The names of the three schools involved could be retained.

Milton lived in Bunhill Row, Finsbury, for the last 12 years of his life and began Paradise Lost there. He is buried in local church St Giles without Cripplegate, also just a few hundered yards from the schools' site.

Prior Weston School is in Bunhill Row temporarily on the site of the former Moorfields School. It is due to move back to its former site opposite the shopping centre in Whitecross Street in April. Richard Cloudesley Special School's primary section and the Fortune Park Sure Start Children's Centre are to move in with it.

"Golden Lane Campus" is the working title used for the site by the architect Jayne Bird, who lives in Golden Lane. However, a site about 400 feet by 250 feet patently is not a campus. The dictionary definition is that it applies to a university. It would be inflated to use it for primary schools.

Golden Lane is a border street with the City of London. The City maintains the part of the street the site faces. Only 80 Islington residents live on it, in the Peabody Tower. Most children come from the 950 Islington flats in Bunhill Ward, Finsbury, below Old Street. They house 2,300 people.

If the working title "Golden Lane Campus" is used it will appear to be a City school. It is for the City to educate its own children as far as possible. The three Bunhill councillors will have to explain setting up what would appear to be a City school, come the 2010 borough election. - Leo Chapman, Dufferin Street, EC1.