Why Oh Wye

This is the entrance quadrangle of the Wye Campus of Imperial College London. It was looking quite good in the sunshine today. I have worked here in IT since the beginning of 1972 and I now have 16 working days left before I take a redundancy/retirement deal.

This was formerly Wye College, University of London, which received its royal charter in 1948. There has been educational activity on the site since 1447, when the original part of the college, now called the Latin School, was established by John Kempe, who was Chancellor of England and then Archbishop of Canterbury.

Higher education, as we know it, started here in 1890 when the South Eastern Agricultural College was set up by the county councils of Surrey and Kent. During the second world war it became co-educational when the women's college at Swanley was evacuated here.

Despite rhetoric about helping to solve the world's food problem, a change of management in Imperial College and a downturn in popularity of agriculture and related subjects has led to the closing down of academic activities here. One remnant remains, which is the distance learning programme which is housed in a building opposite the main college and is run by the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) of the University of London.