History
The present building was constructed in 1760 on the site of a Tudor house known as Wallets and was known as Wollet Hall. Between 1811 and 1822 it was the country residence of British Foreign Secretary, Viscount Castlereagh. Castlereagh, now Viscount of Londonderry, committed suicide there by cutting his own throat with a penknife.
Its status from his death until 1939 is unclear but in that year the building and grounds were purchased by Goldsmiths College and Wollet Hall was renamed Loring Hall after the first warden of Goldsmiths College, Captain William Loring who was killed at Gallipoli during WW1. The main part of the hall was used as a hall of residence for male students and the stable block and associated house were used as an accommodation for a Head of Hall. The grounds became football, hockey and cricket fields for use by the students of Goldsmiths.
Goldsmiths College sold the hall and grounds to BUPA sometime in the 1980s, who converted it into a care home. In 1999 it was bought by the charity Sargent Cancer Care for Children and was renamed Malcolm Sargent House.
In 2003 it was sold again to a company called Oakfield Care and since March 2004 it has been a care facility for those with learning disabilities.
Read more about this topic: Loring Hall
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“History, as an entirety, could only exist in the eyes of an observer outside it and outside the world. History only exists, in the final analysis, for God.”
—Albert Camus (19131960)
“... in a history of spiritual rupture, a social compact built on fantasy and collective secrets, poetry becomes more necessary than ever: it keeps the underground aquifers flowing; it is the liquid voice that can wear through stone.”
—Adrienne Rich (b. 1929)
“Whenever we read the obscene stories, the voluptuous debaucheries, the cruel and torturous executions, the unrelenting vindictiveness, with which more than half the Bible is filled, it would be more consistent that we called it the word of a demon than the Word of God. It is a history of wickedness that has served to corrupt and brutalize mankind.”
—Thomas Paine (17371809)