Westminster College, Oxford
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Westminster College, Oxford was founded in 1851 in Horseferry Road, London, and originally specialised in the training of teachers for Methodist schools. Its neo-Gothic buildings were requistioned during World War I and used as a station for Australian servicemen, during which time the College ceased to function. The site was severely damaged by an incendiary bomb during the blitz of early World War II, and the buildings were never repaired. They were demolished in the 1960s and the headquarters of the television station Channel 4 now stand on the site. The College moved to a purpose-built campus on Harcourt Hill, Oxford in 1959, which is noted for its fusion of Oxford quads with a 'New England' style of archtecture, evident particularly in the large and distinctive chapel.
Following the move, the college offered a number of Theology and Education degrees which were validated by the University of Oxford. In 2000, sudden financial pressures prompted the Methodist Church to lease the Harcourt Hill site to Oxford Brookes University, effectively causing the College to cease to exist. Some of the student body felt that this lease arrangement was not presented to them until it became a fait accompli and that there was a measure of mismanagement and secrecy associated with the negotiations leading to the move. There were also concerns that neither the University of Oxford nor Oxford Brookes would be prepared to continue the education of existing students and award appropriate degrees, though teaching did continue under the auspices of Oxford Brookes, and the University of Oxford honoured its commitment to grant degrees to those students reaching the required standard.
The Westminster Institute of Education continues the use of the Westminster name, being a school of Brookes University and continuing to teach Theology, Education and other subjects at what is now known as the Harcourt Hill campus. In reality, this Institute is not widely recognised outside of the research communities associated with the subjects in which it specialises, and Brookes are known to be reticent about promoting it as a 'brand' to undergraduates and prospective undergraduates, preferring instead to consider the Harcourt Hill campus as nothing other than a part of the wider University.
