End of an era as Heythrop closes

A 400-year-old Catholic higher education institution in central London has announced it is closing as a university college.

Heythrop College, in Kensington, said it could no longer afford the running costs needed for an autonomous institution of the University of London.

It had sought a merger with St Mary’s University, Twickenham, but after a year of talks the idea was abandoned.

The closure is likely to mean a large number of redundancies as the college has 91 staff – including part-timers – and a voluntary severance plan has been put in place. 

Fr Michael Holman SJ, ­principal of Heythrop, told The Tablet: “We are going to be generous to people who are generous to us.”

In a statement, the college said for the last three years it had been trying to secure Heythrop’s future. It said a partnership with St Mary’s would have required financial and human resources that were “greater” than the Society of Jesus – the benefactor of the college and owner of the Kensington premises – was able to provide. 

According to its latest accounts, the Jesuit order in Britain has £478.2 million in cash and investments.

As news of the closure broke on Friday, former staff and students reacted with dismay.

Peter Vardy, a former vice ­principal of Heythrop, said: “There is no institution similar where there is both serious academic enquiry and deep faith.”

He added: “Heythrop has been a beacon over the last 40 years as a place of open-minded intellectual enquiry in theology and philosophy and has helped thousands of young people to search seriously for God and meaning.”

Dame Rachel de Souza, chief executive of the Inspiration Trust that runs a chain of school academies, was an undergraduate at Heythrop in the 1980s.

“So sad to hear our great and much-loved Heythrop College is to close,” she tweeted. “It transformed my education and shaped my life path.”

The news is a blow to the Church in England and Wales given Heythrop’s impressive record in opening up the teaching of theology and philosophy to lay Catholics.

Cardinal Vincent Nichols, the chancellor of St Mary’s University, said he “regrets” that Heythrop will not be able to continue in higher education provision but hoped there would be a future for the college’s Bellarmine Institute, which teaches seminarians, Religious and Jesuit scholastics.

Fr Holman, who is also a former ­provincial of the Jesuits in Britain, said discussions between the college and the order would take place over how Heythrop’s mission might continue.

Fr Holman said this could include opening up the courses offered by the Bellarmine to ­laypeople while Fr Dermot Preston, the current Jesuit ­provincial, said he looked forward to discussions with Cardinal Nichols and others over “new models” for Heythrop.   

Meanwhile, the university regu­lator Hefce (Higher Education Funding Council for England) said it was maintaining close contact with Heythrop to ensure it meets its obligations to students.

The college says it will teach current students until 2018 and teaching will continue at the Kensington site until at least 2017. 

Heythrop is no longer accepting undergraduates or doctoral students but will be admitting those taking masters courses. Hefce said it has “emphasised the import­ance” to the college “of protecting the interests of its students”.

Heythrop, founded in Belgium in 1614, has been part of the University of London since 1971.