Somerset House booklet circa 1963

The Site As has already been said, King's College has an incalculable asset in its central site. It is accessible from all the railway termini, and is served outside both its entrances by buses and underground stations.

It is not a place of cloistered seclusion: the bustle and activity of the metropolis at its gates brings both stimulus and reality to the discipline of teaching and learning for all. For the members of the Arts Faculty it has the great libraries of London, the Public Record Office and the smaller specialised collections within reach. The Lawyers have their Inns and their Courts of Justice, the Engineers their Institutions, the Medicals their hospitals and Royal Colleges' libraries, the Scientists their Societies' Rooms and resources, the Musicians their concerts, whilst for all there is the opportunity for participation in the social, academic and cultural life of a capital which is the site and centre of. conferences and meetings of world-wide importance.

But the site on which the College stands is tiny. To the original one and a half acres an accelerating process of purchase and acquisition has added another acre to the North and East along the Strand and down Surrey Street. On this perimeter the College has plans already approved by the V.G.C. for the erection of new buildings, and in these new buildings the College will be able to conduct its teaching and other activities in circumstances which will provide no more than adequate amenities as is ap'preciated by the V.G.C. The present impossibly cramped and restrictive conditions will be improved, but it must be emphasised that except in Engineering and Laws, where the undergraduate numbers will be increased from 200 to 300 and from 200 to 250 respectively, the new Quadrilateral Buildings will permit of no expansion for the undergraduate teaching which feeds the schools of research here and elsewhere. And considering the speed and complexity with which modern research is developing, the research facilities already committed, will before long again become restrictive.

Faced with this prospect, the College has turned again with renewed confidence to the prospect to the West, to Somerset House. To acquire Somerset House in many ways is not only the ideal solution for the accommodation problems of King's College - it is fast becoming the only possible solution. See photograph.

Because of the quality and architectural distinction of Somerset House, its use by the College would provide the Capital with a