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King's College history, King's
A history of King's final no
Paul Gillary
King's College London (informally King's or KCL) is a public research university located in London, United Kingdom, and a constituent college of the federal University of London.
King's has a claim to being the third-oldest university in
England, having been founded by King George IV and the
Duke of Wellington in 1829, receiving its royal charter in the same year. In 1836 King's became one of the two founding colleges of the University of London.
Add 2 pop-ups here about George IV and the Duke of
Wellington .
King's is organised into nine academic schools, spread across four Thames-side campuses in central London and another in Denmark Hill in south London. It is one of the largest centres for graduate and post-graduate medical teaching and biomedical research in Europe; it is home to six Medical Research Council centres, the most of any
British university, and is a founding member of the King's Health Partners academic health sciences centre. King's has around 25,000 students and 6,113 staff and had a total income of £554.2 million in
2011/12, of which £154.7 million was from research grants and contracts.
King's is ranked 68th in the world (and 19th in Europe) in the 2012 Academic Ranking of World
Universities, 26th in the world (and 7th in Europe) in the 2012 QS World University Rankings, and 56th in the world (and 12th in Europe) in the 2012 Times Higher Education World University Rankings. There are currently 10 Nobel Prize laureates amongst King's alumni and current and former faculty. In September
2010, The Sunday Times selected King's as its "University of the Year". King's is a member of the
Association of Commonwealth Universities, the European University Association, theRussell Group and
Universities UK. It forms part of the 'golden triangle' of British universities.

King's is one of the top universities in the world and its graduates are highly sought by firms across the globe; in a survey of global business leaders when asked to name the top universities they like to recruit from, King's ranked 22nd in the world and 5th in the UK.
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The topics of this section are:
1.
Foundation
2.
Duel in Battersea Fields, 21 March 1829
3.
19th century
4.
20th century
Image 1: The College's patron, King George IV, shown in a portrait by Sir
Thomas Lawrence
King's College, so named to indicate the patronage of King George IV, was founded in 1829 in response to the theological controversy surrounding the founding of "London University" (which later became University College
London) in 1827. London University was founded, with the backing of
Jews, Utilitarians and non-Anglican Christians, as a secular institution, intended to educate "the youth of our middling rich people between the ages of 15 or 16 and 20 or later" giving its nickname, "the godless college in Gower Street".
The need for such an institution was a result of the religious nature of the Universities of Oxford and
Cambridge, which then educated solely the sons of wealthy Anglicans. The secular nature of the institution was met with the disapproval of The Establishment, indeed, "the storms of opposition which raged around it threatened to crush every spark of vital energy which remained". Thus, the creation of a rival institution represented a Tory response to reassert the educational values of The
Establishment. More widely, King's was one of the first of a series of institutions which came about in the early nineteenth century as a result of the Industrial Revolution and great social changes in England following the Napoleonic Wars. By virtue of its foundation King's has enjoyed the patronage of the monarch, the Archbishop of Canterbury as its Visitor and during the nineteenth century counted among its official governors the Lord Chancellor, Speaker of the House of Commonsand the Lord Mayor of London.
Rumours in the press of a competing institution in the tradition of the established church appeared in
1827, but the idea was first openly defined early in 1828 by Reverend Dr George D'Oyly, Rector of Lambeth, in an open letter to Sir Robert Peel, the then Home Secretary and Leader of the House of
Commons. A scheme emerged during the summer of 1828 and a public meeting to launch King's, chaired by the Prime Minister, the Duke of Wellington, and attended by the Archbishops of York,
Canterbury and Armagh and two members of the Cabinet (Peel and the Earl of Aberdeen) was held on
21 June 1828. A committee of twenty-seven was appointed to raise funds and to frame regulations and building plans, but the sum raised by subscription was inadequate. However, a site lying between the
Strand and the Thames was granted to the College by the Crown and building began in 1829. A royal

charter to incorporate King's College was granted by George IV on 14 August 1829, stating the intention of the new College:
...for the general education of youth in which the various branches of
Literature and Science are intended to be taught, and also the doctrines and duties of Christianity... inculcated by the United Church of England and
Ireland.
—Royal charter incorporating King's College, 14 August 1829.
The government of the College was vested in a council consisting of nine official governors, five of whom were clergymen, eight life governors, a treasurer, and 24 other members of the Corporation. Several potential sites for the College were discussed including Buckingham Palace and Regent's Park, however eventually the Treasury provided a site between the Strand and the Thames, running parallel to the yet unfinished Somerset House at a peppercorn rent in perpetuity.
Duel in Battersea Fields, 21 March 1829
Image 2: Arthur Wellesley, 1st Duke of Wellington, fought a duel against the Earl of Winchilsea in 1829 over the Duke's support for the rights of Irish Catholics, and the independence of the newly-established King's
The Duke of Wellington's simultaneous support for an Anglican King's
College and the Roman Catholic Relief Act, which was to lead to the granting of almost full civil rights to Catholics, was challenged by George
Finch-Hatton, 10th Earl of Winchilsea, in early 1829. Winchilsea, and his supporters, wished for King’s to be subject to the Test Acts like the universities of Oxford and Cambridge where only members of the Church of England could matriculate, but this was not Wellington’s intent.
Winchilsea and about 150 other contributors withdrew their support of the new College in response to
Wellington's support of Catholic emancipation. Accusations against Wellington were published in a letter to the Standard on 14 March where Winchilsea charged the Prime Minister with insincerity in his support for the new College. In a letter to Wellington he wrote, "I have come to view the College as an instrument in a wider programme designed to promote the Roman Catholic faith and undermine the established church." Winchilsea also accused the Duke to have in mind "insidious designs for the infringement of our liberty and the introduction of Popery into every department of the State".
The letter provoked a furious exchange of correspondence and Wellington accused Winchilsea of imputing him with "disgraceful and criminal motives" in setting up King's College and when Winchilsea refused to retract the remarks, Wellington - by his own admission, "no advocate of duelling" and a virgin duellist - demanded satisfaction in a contest of arms: "I now call upon your lordship to give me that

satisfaction for your conduct which a gentleman has a right to require, and which a gentleman never refuses to give."
The result was a duel in Battersea Fields on 21 March 1829. Winchilsea did not fire, a plan he and his second almost certainly decided upon before the duel; Wellington took aim and fired wide to the right.
Accounts differ as to whether Wellington missed on purpose. Wellington, noted for his poor aim, claimed he did, other reports more sympathetic to Winchilsea claimed he had aimed to kill. Honour was saved and Winchilsea wrote Wellington an apology. "Duel Day" is still celebrated on the first Thursday after 21 March every year, marked by various events throughout the College, including reenactments.
Image 3: William Otter (1831-36), the first Principal of King's College freely". William Howley, the Archbishop of Canterbury presided over the opening ceremony in which a sermon was given in the chapel by Charles
Blomfield, the Bishop of London on the subject of combining religious instruction with intellectual culture. The governors and the professors, except the linguists, had to be members of the Church of England but the students did not, though attendance at Chapel was compulsory.
King's opened in October 1831 with William Otter, a clergyman, appointed as first Principal and lecturer in divinity. Despite the intentions of its founders and the chapel at the heart of its buildings, the initial prospectus permitted, "nonconformists of all sorts to enter the college
The College was divided into a Senior department and a Junior department, also known as King's College School, which was originally situated in the basement of the Strand
Campus. The Junior department started with 85 pupils and only three teachers, but quickly grew to 500 by 1841, outgrowing its facilities and leading it to relocate to Wimbledon in 1897 where it remains today, though it is no longer associated with the
College. Within the Senior department teaching was divided into three courses. A general course comprised divinity, classical languages, mathematics, English literature and history. Secondly, there was the medical course. Thirdly, miscellaneous subjects, such as law, political economy and modern languages, which were not related to any systematic course of study at the time and depended for their continuance on the supply of occasional students. In 1833 the general course was reorganised leading to the award of the Associate of King's College(A.K.C.), the first qualification issued by
King's. The course, which concerns questions of ethics and theology, is still awarded today to students and staff who take an optional three year course alongside their studies.
Image 4: The Embankment terrace entrance to the Strand Campus overlooking the River Thames, originally designed by Sir William
Chambers, was completed by Sir Robert Smirke in 1835

The river frontage was completed in April 1835 at a cost of £7,100, its completion a condition of the
College securing the site from the Crown. Unlike those in the school, student numbers in the Senior department remained almost stationary during the first five years of the College's existence. During this time the medical school was blighted by inefficiency and the divided loyalties of the staff leading to a steady decline in attendance. One of the most important appointments was that of Charles
Wheatstone as professor of Experimental Philosophy.
At this time, neither King's, nor "London University" had the ability to confer degrees, a particular problem for medical students who wished to practice. Amending this situation was aided by the appointment of Henry Brougham, as Lord Chancellor, who was chairman of the governors of "London
University". In this position he automatically became a governor of King's. In the understanding that the government was unlikely to grant degree-awarding powers on two institutions in London, negotiations led to the colleges federating as the "University of London" in 1836, "London University" thus becoming University College. The governors at King's were offended at the exclusion of divinity from the syllabus by the federal university which was founded as an examining body and advised students to take the Oxford or Cambridge examinations, however, the power of the university to confer degrees marked a period of limited expansion at the College.
In 1840 the College opened King's College Hospital on Portugal Street near Lincoln's Inn Fields, an area composed of overcrowded rookeries characterised by poverty and disease. The governance of the hospital was later transferred to the corporation of the hospital established by the King's College
Hospital Act 1851, and eventually moved to new premises in Denmark Hill, Camberwell in 1913. The appointment in 1877 of Joseph Lister as professor of clinical surgery greatly benefited the medical school, and the introduction of Lister's antiseptic surgical methods gained the hospital an international reputation. In 1855 the College pioneered evening classes in London. In 1882 the King's College London
Act amended the constitution, the objects of the College extended to include the education of women.
Image 5: Evacuated King's College students at theUniversity of
Bristol during the Second World War.
The King's College London Act 1903, abolished all remaining religious tests for staff, except within the Theological department. The end of the First World Warsaw an influx of students, which strained existing facilities to the point where some classes were held in the Principal's house. A government proposal to relocate the College premises to Bloomsbury was considered, but finally rejected in
1925. During the Second World War most students and staff were evacuated out of London to Bristol and Glasgow. The College buildings were used by the Auxiliary Fire Service with a number of
College staff, mainly those then known as College servants, serving as firewatchers. Parts of the Strand

building, the quadrangle, and the roof of apse and stained glass windows of the chapel suffered bomb damage in the Blitz. During reconstruction, the vaults beneath the quadrangle were replaced by a twostorey laboratory, which opened in 1952, for the departments of Physics and Civil and Electrical
Engineering.
One of the most famous pieces of scientific research performed at King's were the crucial contributions to the discovery of the double helix structure of DNA in 1953 by Maurice Wilkins and Rosalind Franklin, together with Raymond Gosling, Alex Stokes, Herbert Wilson and other colleagues at the Randall
Division of Cell and Molecular Biophysics at King's.
Major reconstruction of the College began in 1966 following the publication of the Robbins Report on Higher Education. A new block facing the Strand designed by E.
D. Jefferiss Mathews was opened in 1972. The College underwent several mergers with other institutions, including Queen Elizabeth College and Chelsea College of Science and Technology in 1985, the Institute of Psychiatry in 1997, and the United Medical and
Dental Schools of Guy's and St Thomas' Hospitals were reincorporated in 1998 after becoming independent of the College at the foundation of the National Health Service in
1948. In 1998 Florence Nightingale's original training school for nurses merged with the
King's Department of Nursing Studies as the Florence Nightingale School of Nursing and Midwifery. The same year the College acquired the former Public Records
Office building on Chancery Lane and converted it at a cost of £35 million into the Maughan Library, which opened in 2002.

The topics of this section are:

Governance

Schools and departments

Coat of arms
Governance
The College's formal head is the Principal, currently held by Sir Rick Trainor. The office is established by the Charter of the College as "the chief academic and administrative officer of the College" and the
College Statutes require the Principal to have the general responsibility to the Council for "ensuring that the objects of the College are fulfilled and for maintaining and promoting the efficiency, discipline and good order of the College". The current Chairman of the Council is Lord Duoro.
An Interview with the King’s College London Principal (video)
Senior officers are called the Principal's Central Team. Six Vice-Principals have specific responsibilities for
Education; Research and Innovation; Strategy and Development; Arts and Sciences; International
(developing the College’s global research networks); and Health (where there is also a Deputy Vice-
Principal).
The Council is the supreme governing body of the College established under the Charter and Statutes, comprising 21 members. Its membership include the President of KCLSU (as the student member), the
Principal and President, up to seven other staff members, and up to 12 lay members who must not be employees of the College. It is supported by a number of standing committees.
The Dean of King's College is an ordained person, which is unusual among British universities. The Dean is "responsible for overseeing the spiritual development and welfare of all students and staff". The
Office of the Dean coordinate the Associateship of King's College programme, the Chaplaincy and the
Chapel Choir, which includes 25 Choir scholarships. One of the Dean's roles is to encourage and foster vocations to the Church of England priesthood.
The Archbishop of Canterbury is the College Visitor by right of office owing to the role of the Church of
England in the College's foundation.
Schools and departments
King's is made up of nine academic schools, which are subdivided into departments, centres and research divisions:

Dental Institute

Florence Nightingale School of Nursing and Midwifery

Institute of Psychiatry

School of Arts & Humanities


School of Biomedical Sciences

School of Medicine

School of Natural & Mathematical Sciences

School of Social Science & Public Policy

The Dickson Poon School of Law
Additionally, there are several global institutes with country-specific and regional focuses which offer postgraduate teaching, organise topical events, and make links between the university and cultural and political organisations:
Global Institutes & Centres
The Department of War Studies is unique in the UK, and is supported by facilities such as the Liddell Hart
Centre for Military Archives, the Centre for Defence Studies, and the King's Centre for Military Health
Research (KCMHR).
The Royal Academy of Dramatic Art (RADA) is administered through King's, and its students graduate alongside members of the departments which form the School of Arts & Humanities. As RADA does not have degree awarding powers, its courses are validated by King's.
The coat of arms displayed on the College Charter is that of George IV. The shield depicts the royal coat of arms together with an inescutcheon of the House of Hanover, while the supporters embody the
College motto of sancte et sapienter. No correspondence is believed to have survived regarding the choice of this coat of arms, either in the College Archives or at the College of Arms, and a wide variety of unofficial adaptations have been used during the history of the College. The current coat of arms was developed following the mergers with Queen Elizabeth College and Chelsea College in 1985, and incorporates aspects of their heraldry. The College's coat of arms, in heraldic terminology, is:
The arms:
Or on a Pale Azure between two Lions rampant respectant Gules an Anchor Gold ensigned by a Royal
Crown proper on a Chief Argent an Ancient Lamp proper inflamed Gold between two Blazing Hearths also proper.
The crest and supporters:
On a Helm with a Wreath Or and Azure Upon a Book proper rising from a Coronet Or the rim set with jewels two Azure (one manifest) four Vert (two manifest) and two Gules a demi Lion Gules holding a Rod of Dexter a female figure habited Azure the cloak lined coif and sleeves Argent holding in the exterior hand a Lond Cross botony Gold and sinister a male figure the Long Coat Azure trimmed with Sable proper shirt Argent holding in the interior hand a Book proper.

There are 10 Nobel laureates who were either students or academics at King's.
Name Prize
Year
Awarded
Rationale
1917 For the discovery of X-ray fluorescence Charles Barkla
Sir Owen
Richardson
Sir Frederick
Hopkins
Physics
Physics
Sir Charles
Sherrington
Sir Edward
Appleton
Physiology or
Medicine
Physiology or
Medicine
Physics
Max Theiler
Maurice Wilkins
Physiology or
Medicine
Physiology or
Medicine
1928
1929
1932
1947
1951
1962
For pioneering the study of thermionics
For research on vitamins and beriberi
For research on the nervous system
For exploration of the ionosophere
For developing a vaccine for yellow fever
For the discovery of the structure of DNA
Desmond Tutu
Sir James Black
Peace
Physiology or
Medicine
Mario Vargas Llosa Literature
1984
1988
2010
For his unifying role in the campaign against apartheid
For the development of beta-blocker and anti-ulcer drugs
For his trenchant images of resistance, revolt, and defeat

Multichoice1
Title
Text
Answer *
Answer
Answer
Feedback Correct
Feedback Incorrect
Q1
When was King's College Founded?
1829
1844
1853
Question 1 (multi choice)
When was King's College Founded?

1853

1844

1829
Right Answer Feedback: Your answer is correct. King's College, so named to indicate the patronage of
King George IV, was founded in 1829.
Wrong Answer Feedback: No this is not correct, King's College, so named to indicate the patronage of
King George IV, was founded in 1829.
Question 2 (multi response)
Who of the following took part in the duel in Battersea Fields, 21 March 1829?

Wellington

William Otter

Winchilsea

Sir Robert Smirke
Feedback: Winchilsea and Wlligton took part in the duel in Battersea Fields on 21 March 1829
Question 3 (Gap Fill)
Fill in the gaps in the following sentence.
During the ____________ most students and staff were evacuated out of London to ____________ and
____________. The College buildings were used by the ____________ with a number of College staff serving as ____________.

Feedback: During the [Second World War] most students and staff were evacuated out of London to
[Bristol] and [Glasgow]. The College buildings were used by the [Auxiliary Fire Service] with a number of
College staff serving as [firewatchers].


Wikipedia

Official website

Virtual Tour of King's College London

King's College London lists of students who graduated over 80 years ago, 1836-
 King's College London military personnel, 1914–1918
Return to KEATS
Return to KEATS
King’s Website
King’s Internal Website