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KING'S COLLEGELONDONand SOMERSETHOUSE

SUMMARY

I INTRODUCTION

Origin of King's College and its site on Crown land.

II ACADEMIC MATTERInstruction given at the College - its variety and distinction.Numbers of staff and students in the seven faculties. Recent develop­ments and constantly increasing research activity.

III THE SITE AND SOMERSET HOUSEImportance of central site. Area of College originally one and a halfacres - to be increased to two and three-quarters when new perimeterbuildings are completed. These new buildings will not allow anyreal expansion - only adequate relief from present congestion.Need for Somerset House as University site - its possibilities. Argu­ments why it should be assigned by the Government to Kings'College.

Introduction

In the year 1500 A.D. there were seventy-six universities in Europe.Of these, two were in England, and honourable mention should bemade of the three in Scotland. It was not until the ninteenth century,and as a result of the industrial revolution and the great socialchanges following the Napoleonic wars that the situation altered inEngland, and even then the foundation of Colleges in Durham,Manchester and other northern centres was the outcome of privateenterprise based on technical necessity or the stirring of social con­sciences. It was not until the present century that universities becamethe concern of the central government, and their support, and stillmore recently their foundation, a national responsibility.

London was no exception. Every other capital city in Europe had auniversity before 1836. And in London itself both King's College andUniversity College were established before the University of Londonin which eighty years later they were incorporated, but which in avery real sense they themselves brought into being.

From its foundation in 1829 by Royal Charter on a plot of land,leased from the Crown for a peppercorn, of some one and a halfacres in extent immediately adjacent to Somerset House, King'sCollege has enjoyed the patronage of the Sovereign, has had thePrimate as its Visitor, and during the 19th century counted among itsofficial governors the Lord Chancellor (who still remains), theSpeaker of the House of Commons, and the Lord Mayor of London.

Academic Matters

Contrary to a widely-held view, King's was not founded as a Theo­logical College - the department of Theology first appeared in 1846- though it was established as an institution in which Christianprinciples were intended to influence its development as a place ofeducation, religion and learning.

Within this framework for eighty years the College provideduniversity instruction in Arts, Engineering, Law, Medicine, Scienceand Theology. It also broke new ground, giving courses in Chineseand Arabic, establishing a Day Training College, founding the Gil­bart Lectures in Banking, and setting up a department for theeducation of women. The present School of Slavonic Studies, th'eSchool of Household and Domestic Science (now Queen ElizabethCollege), and King's College Hospital with its medical school all hadtheir genesis in the one and a half acres to the east of SomersetHouse. The development of the nineteenth century foreshadowedand underlined at once the outstanding natural asset of the College ­its central site - and its constant difficulty in finding within its pre­cincts sufficient space to contain its active and expanding academicactivities.

Since 1919, and even more markedly since 1945 these activitieshave increased and grown stronger. To the great names of the lastcentury - Lister, Wheatstone, Clerk Maxwell, Maurice - have beenadded four Nobel Laureates in this, and with the distinction of theteachers has come in ever-increasing numbers the throng of youngenthusiastic research workers, anxious in their turn to discover, toexperiment, to contribute. In 1963 the professoriate of the Collegewas forty-three: of these nine were Fellows of the Royal Society, andfour Fellows of the British Academy. The undergraduates were some1,850, the postgraduates some 400, and in addition to a total academicstaff of roughly 270, there were a number of senior research workersfrom allover the world attached to the various departments inCollege.

The departments themselves have multiplied. Since 1945 Biophysicsand War Studies, and Palaeography have been established as inde­pendent units - all attracting research workers. The UniversityFaculty of Theology has been centred at King's, and from October1964 the University Faculty of Music has been assigned to the College.And for the near future the Professorial Board proposes to set up aSchool of Biological Studies. Undergraduate examination standardsand results compare most favourably - especially in the NaturalSciences - with those of any institution in the country.

The Site

As has already been said, King's College has an incalculable assetin its central site. It is accessible from all the railway termini, and isserved outside both its entrances by buses and underground stations.It is not a place of cloistered seclusion: the bustle and activity of themetropolis at its gates brings both stimulus and reality to the dis­cipline of teaching and learning for all. For the members of theArts Faculty it has the great libraries of London, the Public RecordOffice and the smaller specialised collections within reach. TheLawyers have their Inns and their Courts of Justice, the Engineerstheir Institutions, the Medicals their hospitals and Royal Colleges'libraries, the Scientists their Societies' Rooms and resources, theMusicians their concerts, whilst for all there is the opportunity forparticipation in the social, academic and cultural life of a capitalwhich is the site and centre of. conferences and meetings ofworld-wideimportance.

But the site on which the College stands is tiny. To the originalone and a half acres an accelerating process of purchase and acqui­sition has added another acre to the North and East along theStrand and down Surrey Street. On this perimeter the College hasplans already approved by the V.G.C. for the erection of new build­ings, and in these new buildings the College will be able to conductits teaching and other activities in circumstances which will provideno more than adequate amenities as is ap'preciated by the V.G.C.The present impossibly cramped and restrictive conditions will beimproved, but it must be emphasised that except in Engineering andLaws, where the undergraduate numbers will be increased from 200to 300 and from 200 to 250 respectively, the new QuadrilateralBuildings will permit of no expansion for the undergraduate teachingwhich feeds the schools of research here and elsewhere. And con­sidering the speed and complexity with which modern research isdeveloping, the research facilities already committed, will beforelong again become restrictive.

Faced with this prospect, the College has turned again with renewedconfidence to the prospect to the West, to Somerset House. Toacquire Somerset House in many ways is not only the ideal solutionfor the accommodation problems of King's College - it is fastbecoming the only possible solution. See photograph.

Because of the quality and architectural distinction of SomersetHouse, its use by the College would provide the Capital with a

University precinct on the Strand of which London could be proud.With its magnificent quadrangle it inevitably suggests that it wasdesigned for Collegiate purposes, and those who are fortunate enoughto work in such surroundings derive from them lasting if intangibleadvantages.

The College, once Somerset House was acquired, could lookforward to a long period of both expansion and consolidation. Ex­pansion would be possible in undergraduate numbers - it is estimatedthat the present 2,000 could become 3,500. Expansion would be pos­sible for the library, for the development of teaching in new fields oflaw, for the expansion of study in South American problems, andfacilities on a proper scale would be available for the rapidly in­creasing interest in theoretical physics and computing techniques.Consolidation would be achieved, with adequate space, for the leadin research activities in mathematics, already strongly developed atKing's. The important current trends to give graduates especially inEngineering, postgraduate courses or a general training in researchmethods could be fully implemented.

Equally important, in view of the national needs, a School ofEducation centred on the College could be established. All facultiesin King's have expressed their willingness to support thi.s proposal,which at present is impossible on our existing site, even when theQuadrilateral Buildings are completed.

These buildings themselves would be turned to good account ifSomerset House were obtained, as they would provide much neededroom for further expansion in Engineering and the experimentalsciences.

Provided the Government accepts, as it does, the premise ofuniversity education in the metropolis, then the site problem isbound to be an expensive one. King's College by its present noless than by its past ventures to think that it justifies a far-seeingtreatlnent. The central site is paramount; the student accommodationproblem is not difficult as in provincial cities, because King's students,if they do not live at home or in halls of residence, have the whole ofGreater London in which to find flats or lodgings. The administrative,technical and clerical resources of London are unmatched. Aboveall, the quality of the teaching and research staff, attracted to theCapital, is high, and deserves well.

Somerset House adjoins King's College physically already: it iswithin the power of the Government to make it part of King'sCollege, and this the College believes to be the right policy, financially,academically, aesthetically and in the national interest.