Whitelands Park, SW15

Place Name

Whitelands College, which formerly occupied this site and after which the Park is named, was a woman’s teaching college founded by the Church of England’s National Society in 1841. The original college, one of the oldest higher education institutions in England, predating every university except Oxford, Cambridge, London and Durham, was located at Whitelands House in Chelsea. A flagship women’s college of the Church of England, it was the first college of higher education in the UK to admit women. Across the early years of the 20thCentury the college flourished and came to be regarded as one of the foremost women’s teacher training colleges in the country. At the end of the First World War, it was decided that the school needed a new home, removed from the grime and noise of the King’s Road, and more conducive to study. Winifred Mercier, then the Principal, set about identifying a new site and eventually chose the current location off West Hill. Determined that nothing but the best would do for future teachers, she persuaded the College Council to employ Sir Giles Gilbert Scott, architect of Liverpool Anglican Cathedral, Battersea Power Station, and other prestigious public buildings, to design the new campus. It was opened by Queen Mary in June 1931. The building is Grade II listed, as is the adjoining chapel constructed at the same time. In 1975 Whitfield’s joined with three other teacher training colleges in the local area (Froebel, Digby Stuart and Southlands) to form the Roehamption Institute of  Higher Education. Whitelands vacated its college site in 2005 when it moved to new premises in Roehampton and became part of the new university there. The building was converted to residential use and the grounds subsequently redeveloped with a mixture of detached homes, terraces, and new flat buildings.

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