West London Institute of Higher Education

The West London Institute of Higher Education was located in Isleworth, West London, UK from 1976 until 1995 when it merged with Brunel University.

Lancaster House, Osterley campus

Establishment

West London Institute was created in 1976 from the merger of Borough Road and Maria Grey teacher training colleges and Chiswick Polytechnic. Borough Road College, on the Osterley campus, dated back to 1889 in that location, and to 1804 in its previous home on Borough Road in Southwark. As a College of Higher Education from 1976, West London received funding from local government, and it had to perform adequately in the higher education sector. It was placed under the direction of a geographer, Murie Robertson, who served as Vice-Principal. It awarded HNDs and undergraduate degrees (CNAA), and continued to train teachers. Operating over two campuses, one on St. Margaret's Road in East Twickenham, Middlesex alongside the Thames River, and the other one north on the Great West Road in Osterley, Isleworth. The Institute had a strong reputation for sport, and trained several star athletes, particularly in track and field sports and rugby. The Borough Road name persisted on the rugby field and on the sports strip.

The 1980s

By the 1980s the degree and diploma programmes at WLIHE were operating in a variety of disciplines. The Osterley campus was home to Business Studies, Social Work, Geography, Geology and Sports Studies, while the arts, music and and humanities were clustered a mile away at the old Maria Grey College site at East Twickenham. For a number of years the College was affiliated to The University Of London's INSTITUTE OF EDUCATION and therefore offered University of London degree courses. The courses offered were mostly joint honours awards in various combinations including: American Studies, Drama, Art, French, Business Studies, English Literature, Geography, Geology, History, Physiotherapy, Social Work, Music and Sports Studies. By the 1990s a few Masters programmes were also offered, for example in Social Work, and Environmental Change. A small number of PhDs were also awarded across the disciplines. The British and Foreign Schools Society [1] kept an archive and ran a National Religious Education Centre on the Osterley site. The Twickenham site also contained a ballet and dance school, the Rambert. For its size and status (Higher Education colleges in the UK were not really expected to be high research performers), the Institute performed relatively well in research, with several Departments achieving national recognition in the Research Assessment Exercises of the 1980s and 1990s (1992 result here), and a few staff held national research awards from the ESRC and other bodies.

The merger with Brunel University

For this reason a merger approach by the Vice Chancellor of Brunel University, Michael Sterling, went amicably - WLIHE had expertise and subject areas that Brunel did not. In 1993 WLIHE ceased to exist - for the next two years, its campuses and departments were known as Brunel University College, under the stewardship of a Provost, Prof. Eric Billett; and then simply Brunel University from 1995. This status prevailed for about six years, before Brunel decided to centralise all of its operations on its Uxbridge campus, 8 miles away. By this time, many departments had already moved from Osterley to Uxbridge. The East Twickenham campus - which contains several older buildings and has a riverfront location - was sold off in 2005 and has largely been demolished and converted into housing. Gordon House is currently for sale for £15,000,000.^[1] The Osterley campus suffered the same fate in 2006 and is now a development of new and converted housing, the famous sports fields no longer operational.

The merger with Brunel was generally seen as a positive development by WLIHE staff, given the attraction of a University name for student recruitment and prestige. Almost all staff continued in their jobs, eventually moving to Uxbridge, although the greater expectation of research output at a 'proper' university forced a few into early retirement. In addition, Sterling's replacement, Stephen Schwartz, later forced several Brunel staff into redundancy, closed the Department of Geography and Earth Sciences, and merged several other groups. The Brunel merger ended most teacher-training activity. The subsequent sale of the two campuses is mourned, and the history^[2] slowly being erased in publicity material: for example in 2007, "Brunel celebrates the unification of the entire University on one campus for the first time in 25 years" ^[3] with no mention of its lost assets. The Rambert Ballet School went independent in 2003, citing financial and creative reasons for this move.

Alumni

• Caroline Strong, English stage and screen actress.
• Ian Taylor (1976) GB Hockey goalkeeper and Olympic gold medalist
• Kevin Browring (1978) Wales National Ruby Union coach
• Kathy Smallwood-Cook (1981) 13 medals at the Olympics, World, European and Commonwealth Games in athletics
• Paul Stimpson (1981) GB and England Basketball Captain and most capped player of all time
• Paul Honeyford, a successful author and linguist
• Richard Hill (flanker) Rugby international cap.
• Ian Tullett (1991) Commonwealth Games silver medal; pole jump
• Olympic athlete Iwan Thomas, Silver medallist for 400m at the Commonwealth Games (2002); European 400m Champion (1998), Gold medallist in the 4 x 400m team at the European Championships (1998); Silver medalist in the 4 x 400m Relay at the Olympics (1996) and a member of the winning 4 x 400m relay team at the World Championships (1997)
• Dave Heaven, a musician.
• Jason Wing. Olympic Bobsleigh team
• Courtney Rumbolt. Olympic Bobsleigh team & Bronze medallist from 1998 Winter Olympics (Nagano)
• Dave Rotheram. St Helen's RL coach and Scotland RL Coach
• Steven Callow. Professional rugby League player with Fulham RL
• Roddy Smith. Scotland Cricket. CEO of Scotland Cricket
• Bill Wynn. GB and England Decathlete
• Jamie Quarry. Decathlete and Bronze medallist from Commonwealth Games 2002 (Manchester)
• Fraser Lewry. Author of the book "Kittenwar", The Guardian newspaper food writer and music journalist

Former staff of some renown include:

• Prof. Bill McGuire, UCL, geologist, TV presenter and author
• Prof. Iain Stewart, University of Plymouth, earth sciences television presenter and geologist [2]
• Prof. David Marsland, "new right" sociologist.
• Prof. Della Fish, Professor of Education, Swansea University
• Prof. Christine Bold, School of English & Theatre Studies, University of Guelph, Canada

Refs.

Personal account, S.Batterbury [3]

1. ^ http://www.rightmove.co.uk/property-for-sale/new-homes/property-30288638.html
2. ^ http://www.brunel.ac.uk/about/history
3. ^ http://www.brunel.ac.uk/about/history