Morley College
Morley College is a specialist adult education and further education college in London, England. The college has three main campuses, one in Waterloo on the South Bank, and two in West London namely in North Kensington and in Chelsea, the latter two joining following a merger with Kensington and Chelsea College in 2020. There are also smaller centres part of the college elsewhere. Morley College is also a registered charity under English law. It was originally founded in the 1880s and has a student population of 11,000 adult students. It offers courses in a wide variety of fields, including art and design, fashion, languages, drama, dance, music, health and humanities.
History
Morley Memorial College for Working Men and Women
In the early 1880s, philanthropist Emma Cons and her supporters took over the Royal Victoria Hall, a boozy, rowdy home of melodrama, and turned it into the Royal Victoria Coffee and Music Hall to provide inexpensive entertainment "purged of innuendo in word and action". The programme included music-hall turns with opera recitals, temperance meetings, and, from 1882, lectures every Tuesday by eminent scientists.Local enthusiasm for these "penny lectures" and success in attracting substantial philanthropic funding, led in 1889 to the opening of Morley Memorial College for Working Men and Women. The college was founded by an endowment from Samuel Morley, MP for Nottingham and later Bristol. Samuel Morley is buried at Dr Watts' Walk, Abney Park Cemetery, in Stoke Newington, London.
The college was run separately from the Theatre, but held its classes and student meetings back-stage and in the theatre dressing rooms. The two split in the 1920s, when Emma's niece and successor Lilian Baylis raised funds to acquire a separate site nearby. It attracted some intellectual celebrities such as Virginia Woolf.
Around the same time as the founding of Morley College, concern for the education of working people led to the establishment of other institutions in south London such as the forerunner of the South London Gallery.
The original Victorian college building was extended by Sir Edward Maufe in 1937. The Victorian building was destroyed in the Blitz in 1940 but Maufe's 1930s extension survived. The remains of the Victorian building were cleared and a new college building designed by Charles Cowles-Voysey and Brandon Jones was completed in 1958 and opened by Queen Elizabeth, The Queen Mother. It was decorated with murals by Edward Bawden, John Piper and Martin Froy. A further bronze curtain-wall extension followed in 1973, designed by John Winter, and another in 1982 clad in corrugated Corten steel, on the eastern side of King Edward's Walk.
Sloane School
The Sloane School had about 500 boys and was a grammar school on Hortensia Road in Chelsea. It was named after Sir Hans Sloane, after whom Sloane Square was named in 1771. The school library was opened on 25 November 1931 by Sir Hugh Walpole. It was administered by London County Council. From 1929 until 1961, the headmaster was Guy Boas, who encouraged much-acclaimed productions of Shakespeare. The school magazine was The Cheynean.Sloane School merged in 1970 with the nearby Carlyle School, to become Pimlico Comprehensive School, and Pimlico Academy since 2008. The buildings became Chelsea Secondary School. It then became a part of Kensington and Chelsea College in 1990.
Notable alumni
- Cyril Aldred, art historian
- Dr Anthony Blowers CBE, Commissioner of the Mental Health Act Commission, 1987–95
- Geoffrey Bowler, chief general manager of the Sun Alliance & London Insurance Group, 1977–87
- Frank Branston, journalist
- Sir Frederick Burden, Conservative MP for Gillingham, 1950–83
- David Caminer, systems analyst; helped design LEO, the world's first business computer
- Spartacus Chetwynd, Turner Prize nominee artist
- John Creasey, writer
- Andrew Crowcroft, psychiatrist
- Dr William Davies CBE, Director of the Institute of Grassland and Environmental Research, 1949–64; President of the British Grassland Society, 1948–49 and 1960–61
- Tony Dyson
- Gordon East, professor of geography at Birkbeck, University of London, 1947–70; President of the Institute of British Geographers, 1959–60
- John Fraser, Labour MP for Norwood, 1966–97
- Prof Reg Garton, Professor of Spectroscopy at Imperial College London, 1964–79; discovered the quadratic Zeeman structure in atomic spectra; worked on autoionization of atoms
- Stephen Greif, actor
- Steve Hackett, musician
- Johnny Harris, actor
- Prof Sir Peter Hirsch, Isaac Wolfson Professor of Metallurgy at the University of Oxford, 1966–92
- Prof E R Huehns, Professor of Haematology at University College London, 1975–90 discovered embryonic haemoglobin
- George Innes, actor
- Donald James, born Donald Wheal, author
- Alan Johnson, Labour MP for Kingston upon Hull West and Hessle since 1997
- Rhys Lloyd, Baron Lloyd of Kilgerran, Liberal
- Malcolm Macdonald, footballer
- John Martin-Dye, swimmer at 1960 and 1964 Olympics
- Col Donald McMillan CB OBE, chairman of Cable & Wireless, 1967–72
- Sir Bernard Miller, chairman of the John Lewis Partnership, 1955–72
- Cyril Morgan OBE, secretary of the Institution of Structural Engineers, 1961–82
- Michael Mullin, lead singer with Modern Romance
- James Page, CBE, commissioner of the City of London Police, 1971–77
- Jeremy Spenser, actor
- Prof James Swarbrick, professor of Pharmaceutics at the University of North Carolina, 1981–93
- Harry Turner, managing director of Television South West, 1975–92
- David Wechsler, chief executive of the London Borough of Croydon, 1993–2007
- Prof Carel Weight CBE, painter and professor of painting at the Royal College of Art, 1957–73
Carlyle School
Notable alumni
- Linda Bassett, actress
- Mary Harron, Canadian film director; dated Tony Blair, former music critic; screenwriter; directed American Psycho, also co-writing the screenplay, and attended with her sister Martha, both daughters of Don Harron
- Jacqueline Wheldon, author
Kensington and Chelsea College
The college's first three principals each made a distinctive contribution to its development. Michael Baber, the first principal, laid the foundations for its long-term development. He successfully steered the transition from Local Authority College to freestanding Further Education Corporation, including negotiating freehold ownership of previously shared use sites while developing a strategic partnership with the Local Authority. Under his leadership the college tripled in size, received a positive inspection report and became the first College in inner London to achieve Investors in People recognition. The college's second Principal, Joanna Gaukroger, was the driving force behind the plan to build a flagship centre at the Chelsea site. part funded by sale of some of the existing College estate. She also used her previous experience as an inspector, to help the college achieve a successful inspection at a time when inspection criteria had become more rigorous, as well as expanding the college's vocational programme. Mike Jutsum, the college's third Principal, added a significant new dimension to its work by securing contracts to provide education in prisons and a young offenders institution in West London. This greatly expanded its educational role while also significantly increasing its income. Although the contract wasn't permanent it provided a valuable financial breathing space at a challenging economic time for Colleges nationally. It was during this period that the new Chelsea Centre, set in motion by his predecessor, was completed. The progress achieved in the college's formative years was clearly due to more than a few individuals, however influential they may have been, i.e. to many managers, lecturers and support staff across the college and over many years. The contribution of lecturers in particular is clear from the inspection reports cited above.
In 2016, the borough announced that it had bought the college's Wornington Campus in North Kensington and planned to redevelop the site for housing, causing widespread opposition from the local community. The Grenfell Tower fire the following year caused further issues, as the building was used by survivors of the deadly fire. Further campaigning and criticism of the council led to their sale of the college campus to the government in 2019, at a loss of £18 million. The college's long-term future was secured in February 2020 when it merged with Morley College. This was part of a deal to secure the future of adult and FE education previously provided by KCC. The KCC campuses turned into Morley College campuses.
Campuses and facilities
The main Morley College campus is located in the Waterloo district of London, on the South Bank. Its buildings occupy sites on either side of the boundary between the London boroughs of Southwark and Lambeth. It sits next to Wellington Mills housing estate. From 2017 to 2019 the college underwent extensive refurbishment to the front entrance of the building, including a new foyer and Morley Radio station. Morley college London began offering courses at the Stockwell Centre in September 2017.Alongside these are the Chelsea Centre on Hortensia Road in the Chelsea/West Brompton district, and the North Kensington Centre in North Kensington, both becoming part of Morley College after it merged with Kensington and Chelsea college.
A new Stockwell Centre campus of Morley College close to Stockwell tube station opened in 2017.