ADULT AND TECHNICAL EDUCATION
Adults' evening classes at Christ Church school in 1848
had increased its expenses (fn. 23) and may not have lasted.
Evening classes at Exeter Buildings ragged school in
1845 were for adults, although those at ragged schools
from 1849 were apparently for children, (fn. 24) but adults
may have attended the Oratory school in 1857, when a
teacher, with volunteer assistants, was paid 1s. for two
hours a night from Monday to Friday. (fn. 25) The composition of the 515 evening pupils recorded in 1861 or of the
561 enrolled in 1871 is uncertain. (fn. 26) Night schools
existed in 1871 at Holy Trinity, Park Chapel (boys' and
girls'), St Saviour's, and Exeter Buildings schools and in
1872 at St Luke's in both King Street and Arthur Street.
The largest roll in 1871 was 130 for Park Chapel (boys'),
where the average attendance was 54. (fn. 27)
The school board enrolled 149 males for evening
classes at Marlborough Road school for 1882-3; 116
were aged from 14 to 21, 8 were younger, and 25 were
older. Females in 1882-3 attended Queen's Gardens
school, Brompton, which was superseded by Park Walk
school for 1883-4, when there were 51 enrolments there
and 87 at Marlborough Road. The most popular
advanced classes at Marlborough Road were for the civil
service, with an average attendance of 18, followed by
those for shorthand, with 10, and for drawing, with 9.
Cook's Ground school was opened as Chelsea's third
centre for 1885-6 and the Ashburnham as a fourth for
1890-1, by which time enrolments totalled 647. Both
sexes could attend Marlborough Road from 1889. (fn. 1) The
first cookery centre, one of three in the Chelsea division,
was opened at Marlborough Road in 1882. (fn. 2) Under an
Order of 1888 the apprenticing half of Chamberlaine's
charity might be spent on the technical education in
Westminster of boys from schools in Chelsea. Apprenticing later became more popular, however, and still
accounted for payments, made by Chelsea MB, in 1930. (fn. 3)
Evening classes continued at the four board schools
after the opening of a polytechnic (below). A total of 786
attenders received a grant for 1905-6 and evening institutes offered junior commercial and technical subjects at
Park Walk and general subjects at Marlborough in
1918-19, when classes were also held at Chelsea branch
post office. (fn. 4) There were classes at the Ashburnham,
Marlborough, and Park Walk in 1937 and at Kingsley
school, for women, and Marlborough and Park Walk in
1957. (fn. 5) They survived as part of the ILEA's
Chelsea-Westminster adult education institute at
Marlborough and Park Walk in 1980 and at Chelsea
secondary and Marlborough schools in 1987, before
forming part of Kensington and Chelsea College
(below). (fn. 6)
Onslow College of Science and Technology was leased
no. 183 King's Road for 80 years from 1880. Subject to a
trust for educating children and adults in the arts or in
sciences applicable to industry, it secured a grant from
the committee set up to establish a polytechnic. The
college nonetheless went bankrupt and its premises were
sold under an Order of 1898, leaving c.300 students to
form the nucleus of the polytechnic's student body. (fn. 7)
The South-West London Polytechnic Institute (fn. 8) originated in an offer of £50,000 made in 1888 by the City
Parochial Foundation under the City of London Parochial Charities Act, 1883, in a Charity Commissioners'
Scheme providing for annual grants, and in the
establishment in 1891 of a governing body to build and
maintain a polytechnic serving Chelsea, south
Kensington, and neighbouring parishes. A matching
sum was eventually raised locally and the freehold of a
site in Manresa Road, of which the leasehold had to be
bought, was given by Earl Cadogan. As the sole vestry to
offer an annual grant, Chelsea was allowed to appoint a
governor from 1894. Classes started in 1895 and a full
range was provided from 1896, when over 1,500
students had enrolled. By 1902-3 there were day colleges
for men and women aged 16 or more, schools of art and
domestic economy, miscellaneous lectures, and evening
classes, besides a mixed secondary school (fn. 9) and many
societies.
Early expansion, like the delayed foundation, was
affected by strained relations with the City Parochial
Foundation, which felt that a relatively prosperous area
should do more to help itself. The polytechnic's recreational side allowed it to remain with the Charity
Commissioners after many endowments had been
transferred under an Act of 1899, although supplementary grants were soon made both by the LCC's technical
education board and by the Board of Education. Criticism c. 1930 that most students had already attended
elementary school, suggesting neglect of the working
class, brought a slight reduction in the Charity Commissioners' grant, but it was only under an order of 1949
that control passed to the Ministry of Education.
National status followed, with designation as a college of
advanced technology from 1957, (fn. 10) when the school of
art was to become separate. (fn. 11) Escaping the threat of
removal to Hertfordshire in 1965 but failing to gain full
independence, (fn. 12) the college was admitted as a school of
London University in 1966. The name changed from
South-West London Polytechnic Institute in 1895 to
South-Western Polytechnic in 1898, Chelsea Polytechnic in 1922, Chelsea College of Science and Technology in 1957, and Chelsea College on the final
reception of its charter in 1971. (fn. 13) After merging with
King's College London in 1985, the premises formed
part of that college's Chelsea campus. (fn. 14)
The main building of 1891-5 was designed by J.M.
Brydon in an ornate Georgian style, of red brick with
bold Bath stone dressings. Two- or three-storeyed and
over a semi-basement, it had north and south wings and
included a swimming bath, gymnasium, and hall for
700. (fn. 1) First and second extensions were built in
1899-1900 was a west wing and as additions to the
south, and a third was finished in 1904 at the west end. (fn. 2)
Additional buildings were opened in 1932 (fn. 3) and more,
designed by the LCC's architect Hubert Bennett, were
provided with the new art school opened in 1965. (fn. 4) They
included a communal block and the 11-storeyed
Lightfoot Hall on the west side of Manresa Road and a
chemistry block on the east side. In 1980 the college
acquired the former public library in Manresa Road,
which it linked to the main building by a bridge, and the
site of St Mark's College, where an accommodation
block was renamed Ingram Court. (fn. 5) The Chelsea campus
in 1994 could house 197 residents in Lightfoot Hall and
233 in Ingram Court at no. 552 King's Road. (fn. 6)
Chelsea School of Art, (fn. 7) which evolved into one of the
two main sections of Chelsea Polytechnic and published
its own prospectus from the 1930s, closed in the Second
World War and afterwards temporarily moved to St
Martin's School of Art in Westminster. (fn. 8) In 1957 it was
decided to separate Chelsea's art school from the newly
designated college of advanced technology by uniting it
with the Polytechnic Art School, which was part of
Regent Street Polytechnic. Separation took place in
1964, despite protests at a threatened reduction in
student places to 250 and in teaching posts, since Regent
Street relied on full-time staff while Chelsea drew more
heavily on instruction from practising artists, including
Henry Moore and Graham Sutherland. (fn. 9) A site was
provided by the LCC on the east side of Manresa Road
for buildings which would include an art school, to be
built between 1961 and 1963. A four-storeyed building
faced with white mosaic and with single-storeyed wings,
designed by Bennett and set back from the road, (fn. 10) it was
officially opened in 1965. The art department of
Hammersmith College of Art and Building was taken
over in 1975. (fn. 11) As part of the London Institute, which
was established in 1986 and left the ILEA in 1989,
Chelsea College of Art and Design in 1992 contained
schools of both fine art and design at degree and
post-graduate levels, besides offering part-time A-level
study. (fn. 12) It temporarily occupied former school premises
in Hortensia Road in the 1980s and had sites in Fulham
and Hammersmith in 1996, when the Chelsea site had
354 full-time and 130 part-time students.
Kensington and Chelsea College was formed by the
new education directorate in 1990, replacing the ILEA's
Chelsea-Westminster adult education institute, whose
Chelsea premises became its Hortensia (formerly
Chelsea secondary school) and Marlborough centres. In
1996 it also had a third, smaller, centre in Park Walk,
housing sculpture studios, besides three centres in
Kensington. The college was incorporated in 1993 and
drew 58 per cent of its income form the Further Education Funding Council and 154 per cent from the royal
borough in 1994-5, when four faculties offered both
certificated and personal interest courses to nearly
17,000 students, over 6,000 of whom were part-time. (fn. 13)
Two training colleges, maintained by the National
Society and situated in Chelsea, contributed to local
public education both by supplying teachers and by the
use of a practising school attended by local children.
Stanley Grove, which once had housed Lochée's military
academy, was bought in 1840 (fn. 14) to house St Mark's
College, for men. Whitelands Lodge, once the Misses
Babington's school, (fn. 15) was bought in 1841 to house
Whitelands College, for women.
St Mark's College, aided by a parliamentary grant,
opened in 1841 and was so named from 1843, when the
chapel was consecrated. The principal until 1864 was the
Revd Derwent Coleridge (d. 1883), who earned it a high
reputation and was visited by Macaulay, Charles
Kingsley, and the French statesman François Guizot. (fn. 16) In
1870 there were 104 students, admitted when aged
18-21 and mostly former pupil teachers, who paid
nothing beyond a £10 entrance fee for two years' residence; in 1890 there were 115. (fn. 17) Accommodation was
increased after amalgamation with St John's, Battersea,
in 1923 and again in the 1960s, when numbers rose from
230 to 700, Except during the Second World War, the
College of St Mark and St John remained in Chelsea until
it moved to Plymouth in 1973. The 7-acre site, thought
to be needed for the West Cross route, was compulsorily
purchased in 1975 by the GLC, which after much
controversy sold it in 1980 to Chelsea College, itself soon
taken over by King's College London (above). (fn. 18)
The buildings of St Mark's (fn. 19) in 1997 included Stanley
House or Grove, dating from the early 1690s and with a
sculpture gallery added in the early 19th century by
William Hamilton (d. 1859). As Stanley House,
approached from King's Road, it had been the principal's residence and at first had also housed the students
until the opening of a block at its west end, designed by
Edward Blore and built around a quadrangle in a mixed
Byzantine and Italianate style. To the north, along
Fulham Road, were Blore's stock-brick Romanesque
chapel and the practising school to the west, (fn. 1) both of
1841-7. His King's Road block had been replaced in
1923 by a larger building, itself later extended farther
west. The GLC had used the former students' accommodation as a hostel and it had been only after local resistance and government intervention that it had sold what
was known as the Marjon site to Chelsea College, which
had not been the highest bidder. King's College London
renovated many buildings as a campus but provoked
further controversy in 1989 by proposing to sell the
whole site for development. (fn. 2) A sale was still intended in
1997, when planning consent had been obtained for
offices at Stanley House and for commercial use of the
Octagon. (fn. 3)
Whitelands College (fn. 4) opened in 1841 with 12 students,
soon increased to 40. On a site leased from the glebe, it
received no parliamentary grant and in 1849 was taken
over by the National Society. Later benefactors included
Angela Burdett-Coutts, who from 1854 encouraged
practical domestic training, and John Ruskin, who instituted a May Day festival. (fn. 5) Over 100 students, aged
18-25, attended by 1869. (fn. 6) The 18th-century Whitelands
Lodge, of three storeys and five bays, in 1890-1 made
way for a larger block, in alignment with extensions
which had been built closer to King's Road. Henry
Clutton, who designed additions for the training school
in 1850 and 1855, (fn. 7) also designed a chapel, with glass by
Burne-Jones and a reredos by Morris, which was built in
1881; in 1900 c.200 staff and students attended the
chapel daily and St Luke's church on Sunday morning. (fn. 8)
The College left in 1930 for new premises in Putney,
where fittings from the chapel and the iron gates to
Whitelands Lodge were installed. It was replaced by the
flats and shops of Whitelands House, next to no. 33
King's Road.