For sale: several not-so-careful owners, might suit a private school, good transport links to central London, handy for the trams and street market
CROYDON IN CRISIS: The Whitgift Foundation, the borough’s biggest landowner, is now flogging off the Tudor palace home of the charity’s founder. It might not be an ‘easy’ sale. By STEVEN DOWNES
“For sale with vacant possession”. The estate agent’s phrase is familiar enough, but is nonetheless jarring when applied to the listed buildings of a former Archbishop’s palace that has been home to a girls’ school for more than a century.
As Inside Croydon first reported last month, the Whitgift Foundation, the borough’s biggest private landlords, are flogging off the buildings of its Old Palace of John Whitgift School, which will be closing its gates to its pupils for a final time next July. Old Palace’s prep school closed last summer, and many of its senior pupils have already made the move to other schools.
After a disastrous decade of property mismanagement, mostly caused by the failure to redevelop its commercial property around the Whitgift shopping centre, The Foundation is asking £7million for Old Palace School.
It might not be an easy sale.
“Located within Croydon Old Town, a few minutes’ walk to the High Street and local transport connections,” the estate agents Knight Frank’s spiel states.
Picturesque: the estate agents’ brochure has worked hard to present the listed buildings in an attractive manner
“Currently used as an independent day school… which will close in 2025. Range of classrooms, teaching space, laboratories, administration, recreational space in a variety of buildings
“Further amenities include an indoor heated swimming pool, tennis courts and parking.”
Here’s the tricky bit for prospective buyers: “Grade I-listed Old Palace buildings – with Great Hall, Long Gallery and Chapel.” The school site includes several listed buildings, some of which date back to the 1400s.
In all, the site is 3.3 acres, most of it freehold, with 104,816 sqft of floorspace in its buildings. Even some of the more recent builds, such as the Shah Building, have local listing restrictions.
“Offered as a whole and available as a whole or in part or parts,” Knight Frank say.
What they, oddly, describe as “Institutional for sale in Old Palace Road, Croydon, CR0” is “a rare opportunity”, and “suitable for a range of uses and development – residential, commercial, community and leisure, subject to all necessary consents”.
The 20-page brochure hints strongly that it would probably suit being used as a… school.
It was in September last year that the Whitgift Foundation announced that it would close its girls’ fee-paying school. Old Palace had occupied the site in Croydon Old Town since 1887.
As was first reported by Inside Croydon, the Whitgift Foundation determined that “the sustainability of the school beyond the short-term [is] impossible”.Parents, staff and former pupils were angered that they were never offered an opportunity to test that judgement, and that they were presented with a fait accompli. Certainly, £7million, plus whatever the Foundation might get for selling the prep school site at Melville Avenue, will only cover a small part of the £55million lost from the Foundation’s unrestricted funds since 2017.
Oddly titled: how Knight Frank put up the ‘For Sale’ boards last week
In a letter sent to Old Palace old girls last month, headteacher Andrew Christie wrote, “Knight Frank has been advising the Foundation on its options and the intention is to bring the full school site onto the market… Please note that the site going on the market will have minimal impact on the day-to-day running of the school.”
Christie also assured the school’s former pupils that, “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.”
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.
The sale of parts of what was once Archbishop Whitgift’s palace represent a massive blow to the prestige of the John Whitgift Foundation.
Archbishop Whitgift has 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.
Site plan: how the estate agents’ brochure maps out the property for sale
Some of the school 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.
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.
Guardroom: the old palace buildings has been re-purposed, such as for the school library, complete with oil paintings of former archbishops of Canterbury
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.
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.”
The closure of Old Palace of John Whitgift School is 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.
But despite two planning applications, a massive CPO of the town centre and a public inquiry, the shopping mall 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.
With the independent schools being the Foundation’s biggest source of income, closing one of them appears to be a desperate move, another signal of a deepening crisis for Croydon town centre.
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
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“Institutional for sale”? Seems a rather archaic adjective to use in a sales promotion.
From the era when those described as insane were residents of such instituionals. Perhaps we have been missing something all along.
Croydon is an institution … we’re living in it!
Damn. I’m just a fiver short.