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Current Status of Spaces

The following provides an account on the history and current status of short term colleges (aka lost spaces) included within this research project.

At the height of the short-term colleges, in 1967, a booklet produced by NIAE (the National Institute of Adult Education, now the Learning and Work Institute) outlining the courses available at the time, showed a list of 25 generalist adult education colleges, many of which were based in stately homes or buildings of historic interest. By this stage there were also several long-term residential colleges: Ruskin College in Oxford, Coleg Harlech in Harlech1, Gwynedd, Hillcroft College in Surbiton, which was for women only, Fircroft College, in Selly Oak, Birmingham and Newbattle Abbey2 college in Dalkeith, Scotland, all of which featured in the booklet. Others which might have been included on the NIAE list, such as Denman College, Wortley Hall and Hawkwood College, were seen even at this stage as serving a more targeted audience and did not feature. A conservative estimate puts the colleges at around 35 in number at this point if the long-term and short-term colleges are included.

The Institutes for Adult Learning (IAL) campaigning and support network brings together the remaining short and long-term colleges of a generalist adult education, community-orientated and (some, though not all) residential nature. Under the 1992 Further and Higher Education Act, when colleges of Further Education were taken out of local authority control and set up as freestanding public bodies, each of this small group of colleges was registered as a ‘specialist designated institution’ (SDI).

What distinguished the nine colleges from other colleges of Further Education is that they are independently constituted charities, regulated by their own trust deeds. They all also receive public funding from the Education Skills Funding Agency (ESFA), though this remains a highly contested area, with ongoing arguments about the nature of adult education and what public funding should support. The long-term and short-term nature of the courses, which used to differentiate the colleges, has now largely become irrelevant, with a number offering a mixture of both types of courses. The IAL comprised nine institutions as recently as 2017 when I undertook additional research on the (then) four remaining adult residential colleges, but the picture is shifting.

In 2017, these were Fircroft College, in Selly Oak, Birmingham and Hillcroft College3, in Surbiton, and Ruskin and Northern College4 which still provided long-term residential adult education, as well as the four colleges in London which are part of the network – namely Morley College5, which covers Lambeth, Southwark and Lewisham, City Lit6 in Covent Garden, covering all of London, WMC – the Working Men’s College (WMC)7, now branded as The WM College, the Mary Ward Centre8, serving Kings Cross and Holborn, and the WEA, which is also recognised as an SDI. Ruskin College, founded in 1899, celebrated its 120th anniversary in 2019. In 2021 Ruskin became part of the University of West London in a merger. In 2017 Hillcroft College merged with Richmond Adult Community College and is now part of Richmond and Hillcroft Adult Community College, a further education college located in Richmond and Surbiton in Greater London. Denman College at Marcham Park in Oxfordshire, opened as a College for the Women’s Institute in September 19489 and remains a W.I educational institution today but now only in an online form – ‘Denman at Home’. In July 2020 the trustees announced that they could no longer afford to run Denman at a loss and proposed its permanent closure as a residential space. Denman was sometimes included in the list of short-term colleges in some accounts of their evolution, such as Drews’ account (1995), but is not included in the 1967 booklet.

Since I undertook my research on the remaining adult residential colleges in 2017-18, then Ruskin, Hillcroft, Northern and Fircroft Colleges, two have merged - Hillcroft (established as a Women only college in 1920) merged with Richmond Adult Community College in 2017 to form Richmond and Hillcroft Adult Community College; Ruskin College (established in 1899) was acquired in August 2021 by the University of West London. A third, Northern College, is hoping to secure a “long-term and sustainable future” by merging with a neighbouring general FE college, Barnsley College (FE Week, 8th July), following a “perfect storm” of circumstances which put the College at risk of financial collapse. Councils have said that contributing factors include funding reductions and requirements for funding to be spent on a narrower offer, focused on work skills. Additionally, councils have noted learner numbers falling and some learners preferring to take online courses. Only Fircroft College in Birmingham remains as an adult residential college and it remains at risk, as it has been for several years, of the removal of its funding uplift for residential placements.

Wortley Hall, a stately home near Barnsley and the seat of the Earls of Wharncliffe until the Second World War, was taken on in 1950 by a group of local Trade Union activists who identified the hall as a possible educational and holiday centre and established a cooperative which succeeded in purchasing the hall for those purposes. It is still used by Trade Unions and by the Raymond Williams Foundation. It is also achieving financial viability as a wedding/social venue. It was also not included in the 1967 booklet.

Hawkwood College, a former stately home in Gloucestershire, was bought by followers of Rudolf Steiner in 1947, the Whincops family. From 1971 it was managed by Bernard Nesfield-Cookson – a close friend of Trevelyan, who taught at the College – and his second wife, Eileen. It remains a centre for short courses on the theme of creative exploration in personal and spiritual development, arts and crafts, music, health and well-being, as well as the natural world, ecology and sustainability. Bretton Hall in West Yorkshire, centred on the mansion house, was an important centre for arts and education training and was highly influential until it closed its doors as a college in 2007. It remains significant as the site of the Yorkshire Sculpture Park, established in 1977, whose educational programme enables thousands of people to engage in participatory workshops and events every year. The mansion house and associated buildings are currently being converted into a luxury hotel10. Wedgwood Memorial College, another important space, was a small residential college in Barlaston, near Stoke-on-Trent in Staffordshire, England. The college was owned and operated by Stoke-on-Trent City Council until it was closed down by the council in March 2012.

  1. Coleg Harlech was Wales' only long-term, mature-student residential education college. It was established in 1927 by Thomas Jones (Deputy Secretary to the Cabinet under four prime ministers including David Lloyd George and Stanley Baldwin) to continue the work of Workers' Educational Association in a residential environment. In February 2017 it was announced that Coleg Harlech would be closing as an adult education site at the end of the academic year.
  2. Newbattle Abbey College was established in 1939 under trustees from the four oldest Scottish universities   -  the University of St Andrews, the University of Glasgow, the University of Aberdeen and the University of Edinburgh -  specifically for adults returning to education. New residential building was added in the 1960s and funding came through the Scottish Education Department. It has continued to offer some adult education. 
  3. Hillcroft College was founded in 1920, as a Residential Working Women’s College, in the immediate aftermath of the First World War.  It was initially based in a large house in Buckinghamshire but in 1926 it moved to its current location in Surbiton and this was also the point at which the college became known as Hillcroft College. Since 2017 Hillcroft College when Hillcroft merged with Richmond Adult Community College Hillcroft is now part of Richmond and Hillcroft Adult Community College, and is now a further education college located in Richmond and Surbiton in Greater London. 
  4. Northern College was founded in 1978 and is an adult residential college based at Wentworth Castle in Barnsley, South Yorkshire. Its explicit objective remains to provide transformational residential and community education for the empowerment of people without formal qualifications who are seeking to return to learning, as well as training for those who are active in community and voluntary groups and in trade unions. 
  5. Morley College was opened in 1889 and is one of the country's oldest and largest specialist providers of adult education, with a particular focus on providing adult education in arts, culture and applied sciences to the communities of Lambeth, Southwark and Lewisham.
  6. City Lit opened in 1919. It began as part of London’s literary institute movement, which came into being after the First World War, and of which City Lit is the sole survivor out of the 16 that had operated in London over the years. City Lit is now Europe's largest provider of short courses for adults. 
  7. The WMC was founded in 1854 and was associated with the Cooperative Movement and the Christian Socialists. The Working Women’s College, founded 10 years later in 1864, finally merged with WMC in 1967.
  8. Mary Ward Centre was originally a Settlement House. Mary Ward campaigned vigorously for the construction of a new Settlement in the St Pancras/Holborn area. In 1897 the settlement moved in to the new purpose built Arts and Crafts building in Tavistock Place, and then to Queen Square in 1982. It remains a settlement organisation with an ongoing objective to “promote public education and social service for the benefit of the community”. 
  9. On Friday 24th September Sir Richard Livingstone performed the opening ceremony. Marcham Park, in the village of Marcham near Abingdon, had been de-requisitioned from the Air Ministry. It was apparently in a sorry state – “the grounds and garden had been sadly neglected” (Miss Farrer to J. Wilkie, Carnegie UK Trust, 10th Oct. 1947, NFWI archives, quoted in Rooms Off the Corridor – Education in the WI and 50 years of Denman College, 1948 – 1998, Stamper, (1998), London: WI Books, p.90). 
  10. Walter Drews, former Principal of Wansfell College, a short-term residential adult education college which existed at the same time as Attingham, offered a detailed analysis of the short-term colleges in his 1995 PhD thesis in which he gave detail of each of the colleges, such as what subjects they taught, the nature of the student body and their period of operation.