West London Institute of Higher Education


The West London Institute of Higher Education, a two-campus academic establishment, was located in Isleworth and East Twickenham, West London, UK from 1976 until 1995 when it became Brunel University College. In 1997 it was fully integrated into Brunel University.

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 1798 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, as Principal, of a sport psychologist and former physical education lecturer, Professor John Kane OBE, and a geographer Murie Robertson, who served as Vice-Principal. It awarded undergraduate degrees and HNDs, and continued to train teachers, being, for example, a specialist 'Wing College' for Physical Education. Operating over two campuses, one on St. Margarets Road in East Twickenham, alongside the River Thames, and the other immediately south of the Great West Road in Osterley. The Borough Road name persisted on the rugby field and on the Institute's sports strip.
References: www.brunel.ac.uk › about › PDF › INFO-SHEET-BRC

The 1980s

By the 1980s the degree and diploma programmes at WLIHE were being delivered through a variety of disciplines. The Borough Road College campus in Osterley was home to American Studies, English Literature, History, Religious Studies, Geography, Geology, Business Studies, Physiotherapy, Occupational Therapy, Social Work, and Sports Studies, while the Arts, Music, and Education were clustered two miles away at the old Maria Grey College site in East Twickenham. For a number of years, the Colleges were affiliated to The University of London's Institute of Education and therefore offered University of London degree courses. By the 1990s the courses offered were mostly joint honours awards in various combinations including: American Studies, Drama, Art, French, Business Studies, English Literature, Geography, Geology, History, Religious Studies, Music and Sports Studies, plus single-honours degrees in Physiotherapy, Occupational Therapy, and Social Work. By the 1990s a few Masters programmes were also offered; for example, in Sport Sciences, Social Work, and Environmental Change. A small number of PhDs were also awarded across the disciplines. The British and Foreign School Society kept an archive and ran a National Religious Education Centre on the Osterley site. The Twickenham site also hosted a ballet school, the Rambert. For its size and status, the Institute performed relatively well in research, with several departments achieving national recognition in the Research Assessment Exercises of the 1980s and 1990s – WLIHE also did well in the 1996 assessment – and a few staff held national research awards from the ESRC and other bodies.

The merger with Brunel University

A merger approach by the Vice-Chancellor of Brunel University, Professor Michael Sterling, went amicably – WLIHE had expertise and subject areas that Brunel did not. In 1995 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 as Brunel University from 1997. This status prevailed for about 6 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 contained several older buildings and had a riverfront location, was sold off in 2005 and was largely demolished and converted into luxury housing. Its central building, Gordon House, was on the market for 2 years at £15,000,000 after being sold once. It has been renamed Richmond House, even though it is not in Richmond.

Alumni

Former notable staff include: