New term, new school: a Serenity special school will begin its lessons on the Old Palace site from next month
A special school operated by Serenity will begin to operate from the historic Old Town site from next month, after the sale was sealed by Croydon’s biggest landowners for £4.7m. By GENE BRODIE, education correspondent
The Whitgift Foundation last night confirmed that the sale of most of the Old Palace School site had been completed for £4.7million – £2.3million below the original £7million guide price for the whole site when it was placed on the market last December.
As Inside Croydon reported earlier this year, the site – which includes several heritage and listed buildings, some dating to the 1400s – has been acquired on behalf of a special educational needs school run by Serenity Education Group Ltd. Serenity will begin operating from the site in Croydon Old Town from next month.
The private Old Palace of John Whitgift School closed in July after nearly 140 years of educating girls on the site. The Foundation announced its intention to close the school in September 2023.
The Foundation, which operates care homes, the Whitgift Almshouses in Croydon town centre and Whitgift and Trinity large fee-paying secondary schools, as well as owning the Whitgift Centre shopping mall, says that it “is in advanced negotiations with an educational charity” for the sale of the as-yet-unsold parts of the Old Palace site.
Ancient and modern: the Old Palace school site dates back to the 1400s
In a statement issued from the Foundation’s offices last night, they said: “The Foundation is under a duty to follow guidance from property advisors in terms of achieving reasonable value from any sale of property.
“Proceeds from the sale will go to the Foundation’s education covenant.”
That may include helping to fund burseries for pupils to attend the Foundation’s remaining schools, as well as paying towards some works to convert Trinity School to become fully co-educational. Trinity, in Shirley Park, which already has girls in its Sixth Form, will open its gates to girls aged 10 and 11 from September 2027.
“The decision made in September 2023 to close Old Palace School was a particularly difficult one,” said Roisha Hughes, who inherited the closure plans when appointed as the Foundation’s chief executive last year.
“As the school finally closed its doors to pupils earlier this summer, completing this sale will allow a new use of the site for educational purposes.
“We wish Serenity Education Group Ltd all the best with their new venture.”
The Serenity group already operates special schools in Eltham, Crawley and Maidstone, and they have a secondary on Rowans Hill in Surrey.
The Old Palace sale means that the financially squeezed Foundation will have banked close to £12million from property disposals this year, having already sold the Melville Road site of Old Palace’s prep school for £7million to a Hindu education organisation in February.
The Old Palace purchase has been made on behalf of Serenity by The Curwen Group, a family-run property company based in Covent Garden.
Serenity will be moving into historic buildings which were once the home of archbishops of Canterbury and where Queen Elizabeth I stayed over more than once, as they take on The Great Hall, Old Palace, Science Block and Cathedral Building.
The Whitgift Foundation had hoped to achieve £6million for this portion of the property, although it appears that the market for 700-year-old buildings used for private education is not what it once was.
The school’s swimming pool and Jubilee Building, tennis and netball courts on Howley Road and Cranmer Road, the Shah Building and Annex do not appear to be included in this deal.
The modern Shah Building, where Old Palace Sixth Formers studied, was on a long lease to the Foundation which sources suggest costs £1million per year. The Foundation is known to be looking to sub-let that building.
The Foundation, which is Croydon’s biggest landowner, says that their sales agents, Knight Frank were able to recommend accepting the £4.7million offer “as achieving good value for the charity”.
The Old Palace buildings were earlier this year granted an enhanced listing by Historic England to conserve their heritage assets.
Site plan: how the estate agents’ brochure mapped out the property for sale. Buildings 1, 2, 3 and 4 have been sold. The others, including the Jubilee Building and swimming pool, as well as the Shah building, remain on the market
The closure of 900-pupil Old Palace of John Whitgift School was a direct consequence of the Foundation’s £1billion gamble to create a new “palace”, a retailing supermall to replace the ageing Whitgift Centre shopping centre.
Announced in 2012, that development has been stalled by the developers’ reluctance to commit to what was promised to be a £1.4billion regeneration of Croydon town centre. Instead, developers Westfield – now the Paris-based URW – have delivered a decade of blight for existing businesses and residents.
Old Palace School is a significant casualty of that blight. As was first reported by Inside Croydon, the Whitgift Foundation determined that “the sustainability of the school beyond the short-term [is] impossible”.
The closure was highly controversial when announced in 2023, the decision linked to the Foundation’s worsening financial position. The sale of Old Palace in Old Town and its Melville Avenue prep school site in South Croydon will only cover a small part of the £55million lost from the Foundation’s unrestricted funds since 2017.
According to a recent Inside Croydon interview with Roisha Hughes, the delays in delivering any development in Croydon town centre through Unibail Rodamco Westfield will likely now only be overcome by the contribution of tens of millions of pounds of public money towards the build costs of thousands of flats on the site of the Whitgift Centre.
Read more: Old Palace pupils deliver improved grades in school’s final year
Read more: Foundation sets £7m price tag on Old Palace’s listed buildings
Read more: Whitgift Foundation decides to close Old Palace School in 2025
Read more: Crumbling finances see troubled Foundation lose millions more
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All demonstrates the deep mire the Whitgift has entered since following the advice of its committee member (of the time) Gavin Barwell to expand it’s Whitgift Centre development plans to become a Regional Retail Centre just as internet consumption was coming on stream. If you want to see what a fire sale looks like to get something off your plate to increase income and reduce costs to survive this is what it looks like. Will it be enough to allow the Whitgift Foundation to operate as something that it looks like in it’s current form?
will another piece of our heritage disappear under a sea of concrete and glass I wonder ?
No.
Nah. Serenity Education Group, will open a special educational needs school in Sept. Even though they sold cheap, the Whitgift Foundation sold to the right ppl.