Impressive vista: Knight Frank’s sales site might suggest that half of Croydon is up for sale. In fact, Coombe House is the 264-year-old listed building at the bottom of the photograph
EXCLUSIVE: The slow saga of the closure of Old Palace School may be about to take a significant step over the future of its former prep school, while Coombe House by Lloyd Park, offered at £6m, is ‘sold subject to contract’
The sites of two private schools in South Croydon appear to have found buyers in potentially multi-million-pound property deals.
“Global property consultancy” – estate agents to you and me – Knight Frank have placed a “Sold – subject to contract” notice on Coombe House, the listed building adjoining Lloyd Park, which was most recently the home of Oakwood School.
The property was placed on the market last August with a £6million price tag.
The same agents have removed all trace from their sales website of the Old Palace nursery and prep school site on Melville Avenue, which had been put up for sale by the financially challenged Whitgift Foundation last June with a £7.5million asking price.
Old Palace’s pupils, staff and parents were shocked in September 2023 when the Foundation – Croydon’s biggest land-owners – announced that they were to close the private girls’ school at the end of the 2025 summer term.
For sale: the £7.5m price tag for the Melville Avenue site seemed on the low side
The senior school remains open – mainly for those girls in their final year of public examination courses. But following a mass exodus of pupils as their parents sought to secure places at alternative schools, the closing date for the prep and nursery was brought forward to last July.
What was once the site of Croham Hurst girls’ school (before the Whitgift Foundation took it over in 2008) comes with some playing fields, which locals fear might be eyed by greedy property developers as suitable for another collection of blocks of flats.
The Whitgift Foundation is said to be “in detailed negotiations” with a potential buyer. An announcement over the future of the site is expected by the end of April.
The senior school site, in Croydon Old Town, which includes listed buildings that were part of the titular old palace of Tudor and Elizabethan-era Archbishops of Canterbury, is also currently up for sale – for offers of at least £7million.
One now former parent of an Old Palace pupil told Inside Croydon, “The Whitgift Foundation was always going to sell the Melville Avenue site to fill the huge hole in its finances.
“It is just a shame it has come at the cost of educating girls in Croydon.”
Coombe House, meanwhile, has no playing fields to dangle before developers – though that didn’t prevent Knight Frank from including a photograph of the verdant acres of Lloyd Park in their online sales brochure for that property. Oakwood School had leased a couple of rugby pitches from Croydon Council – public land that ought not to have been included in the sale of Coombe House.
The 264-year-old Grade II-listed Coombe House has a host of period features, including what was thought to be carvings by Grindling Gibbons and what was rumoured to be the beginnings of a tunnel through to Addington Palace.
In the past it was used by the NHS as a therapy centre, when known as Geoffrey Harris House, before being turned into Oakwood School. Oakwood is part of the PACT Catholic education trust, and it relocated the fee-paying school to Upper Norwood in 2023 to join two other PACT schools at what used to be the Virgo Fidelis state girls’ convent school.
Period features: the interior of Coombe House includes a number of impressive features which would require sensitive handling by any new owner
“We hope that the new owner will respect the rich educational history of the property and continue its use as a learning institution,” said Adrian Forastier, a PACT trustee, when the building was placed on the market.
But then again, if the money’s right…
“We recognise the site’s vast potential for other uses and remain open to possibilities,” Forastier also said.
The identity of the buyers have not yet been disclosed. “I suspect it will be a developer,” one source familiar with the property market said today.
“Private schools are closing, not just because of VAT on fees, but because there are fewer pupils around to take up places.
“It might be possible to convert Coombe House into a set of apartments – the glamour of living in a listed building next to parkland might attract some top-end buyers. But those kind of sensitive conversions never come cheap,” the source said.
Read more: Charity Commission alerted to problems at Whitgift Foundation
Read more: Another Whitgift shock as second head teacher decides to quit
Read more: Foundation brings forward Old Palace prep closure by a year
Read more: Falling rolls and rising fees: how Old Palace got squeezed
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Bought by some well meaning philanthropists looking to preserve some of the history of Croydon no doubt!!
Last August I contacted Knight Frank to ask if I and a group of friends could have a tour of Coombe House. We were interested in its history, particularly as it was the former home of Frank Lloyd, the newspaper magnate who gave the land which now forms Lloyd Park to the Council.
Knight Frank acknowledged my request, but by September I had heard no more. I chased the matter up. The reply came back “I am just waiting to confirm the next viewing day and when I will be on site”. Following that I heard nothing.
Clearly Knight Frank are under no obligation to show a property to a person who is unlikely to be a potential buyer. But I think it might have enhanced their reputation if they’d responded positively to a local expression of interest in the history of the building.
Did you mention your connection with Inside Croydon? Try again, but I don’t think IC issue accreditation. At least, not yet
Is Croydon council not the biggest landowner in the Broough or the City of London Corporation? I wish you’d be less bias in your reporting to make the read more digestible..
No, they are not.
Facts, Gav, facts. They don’t have bias
It’s the Church of England who are the biggest landowners – some of it obscured by labyrinthine records. Lots, including the town centre, were registered originally to the Archbishops of Canterbury. Time to bring it into public ownership, in a way that stops rogue local authorities flogging it off to BXB
No entity owns more than the half-a-billion-pound property portfolio in Croydon under the ownership of the Whitgift Foundation… however much its acts of self-harm manage to diminish its assets on a daily basis.