Westfield College

Westfield College was a small college situated in Kidderpore Avenue, Hampstead, London, and was a constituent college of the University of London from 1882 to 1989.[1] The college originally admitted only women as students and became coeducational in 1964. In 1989, Westfield College merged with Queen Mary College. The merged institution was named Queen Mary and Westfield College until 2013, when the name was legally changed to Queen Mary University of London.[2]

History

The college was founded in 1882 by Constance Louise Maynard (1849–1935) and Ann Dudin Brown (1822–1917),[3] who was the founding benefactress and council member from 1882 to 1917. Eleanor Constance Lodge was Principal of Westfield from 1921 to 1931, Mary Stocks from 1939 to 1951, and Kathleen Chesney from 1951 to 1962. Until the mid-1980s residences were still segregated.

In the mid-to-late 1980s, the University of London underwent considerable reorganisation, and many smaller colleges were merged. Consequently, Westfield was merged with Queen Mary College in 1989, forming Queen Mary and Westfield College. Most student accommodation, administrative offices and several academic departments continued to be based at the Hampstead campus until 1992, however, and the College retained its separate identity. The new, combined, College was finally located at Queen Mary's site in Mile End, East London from 1992 onwards. However, some departments moved to King's College London and many academic staff moved to other colleges, such as Royal Holloway College.

The history of the college called "Castle Adamant in Hampstead", by Janet Sondheimer, was published in 1983.

Present day

King's College London took over the former Westfield site, which has been divided up over the years. The majority of the south side of the site (The Queen's Building and other teaching blocks) was demolished in the early 1990s to make way for The Westfield Apartments, a block of luxury private flats. The remainder of the south side (the Caroline Skeel Library, Ellison, Temple, Chesney and Stocks buildings) was used by King's College as student accommodation and as an archive. The north side of the site (Queen Mother Hall, Bay House, Old House, Maynard, Lady Chapman, Orchard I and II, Dudin-Brown and Skeel buildings) remains in use as student accommodation, with Orchard I and II renamed for Lord Cameron and Rosalind Franklin, respectively. Until 2005, the Old House was home to the London Jewish Cultural Centre.

The Westfield College name was lost following the 2013 change of the merged institution's legal name to Queen Mary University of London. The new college's student accommodation complex (opened in 2004) is named the Westfield Student Village as a reminder of the history of Westfield College. Moreover, the Westfield Trust Prize, an academic cash prize given to outstanding undergraduate or postgraduates studying at Queen Mary, has been established in memory of the college.

Alumni

References

  1. ↑ Janet Sondheimer (1983). Castle Adamant in Hampstead. ISBN 0-904188-05-1
  2. ↑ About Queen Mary: Our History
  3. ↑ Oxford DNB Article: Brown, Ann Dudin
  4. ↑ "The Rev Joyce Bennett obituary The Guardian". The Guardian. 26 July 2015. Retrieved 2 August 2015.
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