Goldsmiths enters 125th year with summer celebrations

On Wednesday 22 July 1891, the Prince of Wales opened the Goldsmiths’ Company’s Technical and Recreative Institute in New Cross in a ceremony bedecked with pomp and pageantry.

The university’s early days are deeply rooted in the Victorian principles of benevolence and self-improvement, after the Worshipful Company of Goldsmiths bought what is now the Richard Hoggart Building from the Royal Naval School for £25,000.

In turn, the Company of Goldsmiths would pass the Institute on to the University of London in 1904 to form Goldsmiths College and Goldsmiths would become a full College of the University in 1989.

Towards the end of the 19th century, the public and parliament were concerned that Britain was falling behind its rivals – particularly Germany – in the provision of cheap scientific and technical education. This led to the introduction of the Technical Instructions Act of 1889.

Six years earlier, the City of London Parochial Charities Act had released civic funds previously bound up by red tape to be used by the charity commissioners, who allocated £150,000 towards establishing three polytechnics in south London.

The only stipulation was that a similar sum be raised from private sources. As one of the richest of the London livery companies, the Goldsmiths’ Company agreed to foot the bill for one of these institutions and create the Goldsmiths’ Institute.

At the opening ceremony in 1891, the Prince of Wales was accompanied by the princess, members of the court and the livery of Goldsmiths’ Company, members of parliament and the House of Lords, local dignitaries and business men.

The organist to the new institute, Churchill Sibley, composed commemorative cantata set to “dainty verses” by H Sutherland Edwards, speeches were made and the royal party toured the buildings.

Staff at the institute then began promoting the education and well-being of young men and women belonging to “the industrial working and poorer classes” – a vital purpose which has resonated over the decades to the present day.

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