For sale: one former archbishop’s palace, several not-so-careful owners. A few historical snagging issues may require attention
EXCLUSIVE By STEVEN DOWNES
Croydon’s biggest landowners, the Whitgift Foundation, are now selling the Tudor archbishop’s palace that was once home to their founder.
In September 2023, the Whitgift Foundation announced that it would close its girls’ fee-paying school, Old Palace of John Whitgift, which has occupied the site of the Elizabethan era Archbishop of Canterbury’s palace in Croydon Old Town since 1887. The school site includes several listed buildings, some of which date back to the 1400s.
As was first reported by Inside Croydon, the Whitgift Foundation determined that “the sustainability of the school beyond the short-term [is] impossible” and that Old Palace will close completely in July next year.
Old Palace, previously a state grammar school, had been a fee-paying independent school since 1975, with fees in the secondary school almost £20,000 per year.
The decision to close the school came as a complete shock, to staff as well as to parents, some of whom threatened to take legal action for the breach of promise suffered by their 11 to 15-year-old daughters, most of whom were forced to seek their education elsewhere.
Summed up in six words: an Old Palace School protester outside the Whitgift Foundation almshouses and office
The Foundation turbo-charged the closure process by offering a fees amnesty and a £500 “relocation” allowance to the parents of girls who managed to find alternative schools before half-term in October 2023. It is reckoned that at least half of the school’s 600 pupils took them up on the offer.
The Whitgift Foundation closed its junior school operation, for under-11s, based at Melville Avenue in South Croydon, in July this year.
What was once Croham Hurst School (until the Foundation gobbled that up in 2008), sits in some prime real estate close to Lloyd Park, and has none of the tricky heritage listings and covenants that are attached to Old Palace’s senior school site in Old Town.
It is understood that the Foundation may have already found a buyer for at least part of that site. The Whitgift Foundation did not deny they had sold Melville Avenue when contacted by Inside Croydon this week.
Now, the disposal process of their town centre secondary school has begun.
In a letter sent to Old Palace old girls yesterday, Andrew Christie, who took over as headteacher from Jane Burton in the summer, wrote, “I wanted to write to you with an update about the future of the Old Palace Senior School site.
“It has now been determined that the properties which form the senior school will no longer be required by the Whitgift Foundation for educational purposes following the closure of the school at the end of August 2025, and arrangements are currently being made for the school site to be marketed.
“Knight Frank has been advising the Foundation on its options and the intention is to bring the full school site onto the market this month. The Foundation will retain an open and flexible approach throughout the marketing period…”, they may need to… “which may see interest in the whole site or for individual parcels of the site.
Wrapping up: Andrew Christie is head at Old Palace for its final year
“Please note that the site going on the market will have minimal impact on the day to day running of the school.
“The Foundation recognises the heritage and historical significance of the site to Croydon. We have been working with heritage advisors to ensure that the importance of the site will be reflected throughout the process and to any buyers.” Which is nice.
It might prove to be a tough sell: a complicated site, adapted as a school, with several listed buildings to which little substantial alteration will be allowed, but which could prove to be costly to maintain for any new owners. And trying to find a buter at a time when many private schools are still trying to fathom how to cope with falling rolls, 20% VAT added to their fees and a hike in employers’ National Insurance.
The sale of parts of what was once Archbishop Whitgift’s palace, though, will be a massive blow to the valued prestige of the John Whitgift Foundation (recently renamed to add the bish’s first name, presumably to distinguish it from the Eric Whitgift Foundation).
Whitgift might be spinning in his tomb in the neighbouring Croydon Minster.
John Whitgift was Elizabeth I’s favourite archbishop, and he founded the charity in 1596 when he laid the foundation stone for his hospital and then for a school at the centre of Croydon.
Some of the school’s site is said to date back as far as the 9th Century (the earliest recorded presence of Croydon Minster), and it includes a classroom that was once Queen Elizabeth I’s bedroom.
The archbishop’s palace was first a 12th Century manor house. The undercroft, now the staff room, is of that period.
Charity fatigue: a statue of John Whitgift in the town centre almshouses. The multi-million land-owners are hard-hit by the decline of their shopping centre
It was during the 15th Century that the core of today’s palace was built. The Guardroom – now the school library – dates from the time of Archbishop Thomas Arundel and is one of the earliest uses of brick in Britain.
A few decades later, Archbishop John Stafford built what is now one of the finest medieval great halls left in southern England. Under its high arched-brace roof, Henry VI and Henry VII and Queen Mary and Elizabeth I dined, “each sitting on Stafford’s stone throne, part of which survives against the west wall”, according to the school’s website. Wonder if that will get a mention in the estate agent’s particulars?
There’s also the Long Gallery, “originally 16th Century, but enclosed and glazed 300 years later and only recently restored”, and the chapel, which dates from the 15th Century. This includes a Norman-era font, “a gift in Victorian times from St George’s Church, Southwark”, according to the school. “Thus, in the chapel of this Croydon girls’ school, is the font where Charles Dickens had Little Dorrit christened.”
In the years, decades and centuries after archbishops abandoned Croydon town centre for the more verdant and leafier realms of their newer palace at Addington in the late 18th Century, the buildings were used variously as a linen printers, bleaching works, a laundry and ultimately a barn, until the site was given to a holy order of nuns, who adapted it as a girls’ school.
The closure of Old Palace of John Whitgift School is, of course, a direct consequence of the Foundation’s £1billion gamble to create a new palace, a retailing supermall to replace the old Whitgift Centre shopping centre, which despite two planning applications, a massive CPO of the town centre and a public inquiry, is still no closer to being started than when the organisation first revealed their choice of development partners to be Westfield.
The Whitgift Foundation may be registered as a charity, but in reality it is a mid-sized commercial property landlord and the borough’s biggest land-owner. The money the Foundation makes from its property portfolio goes towards subsidising its schools, paying bursaries for at least 500 of its pupils, and running its care homes and almshouses, one of which uses the site of the original Whitgift hospital, at the fulcrum of Croydon town centre where the tram rattles down George Street and across the High Street.
And there behind the almshouses stands the long-empty Allders department store building and beyond it, the neglected and run-down Whitgift Centre, once a reliable source of so much profit for the Foundation, but which lately has become a growing headache for the charity.
Planning blight: it could be at least 10 years more before Westfield complete their long-promised redevelopment
With the independent schools being the Foundation’s biggest source of income, closing one of them appears to be a desperate move. “Selling off the family silver”, in the form of ancient buildings linked to the name of the John Whitgift Foundation’s founder, is another move signalling the deepening crisis.
And yet we learn just this week that Westfield think it could take another 10 years, at least, to complete their regeneration scheme and, ultimately, hopefully, revive the Foundation’s fortunes.
What else might they be forced to flog off in the meantime?
Read more: Whitgift Foundation decides to close Old Palace School in 2025
Read more: Westfield wants to build five times as many flats in town centre
Read more: Crumbling finances see troubled Foundation lose millions more
Read more: Falling rolls and rising fees: how Old Palace got squeezed
- If you have a news story about life in or around Croydon, or want to publicise your residents’ association or business, or if you have a local event to promote, please email us with full details at inside.croydon@btinternet.com
- Our comments section on every report provides all readers with an immediate “right of reply” on all our content. Our comments policy can be read by clicking here
- Inside Croydon works together with the Bureau of Investigative Journalism, as well as BBC London News and ITV London
