Accommodation at Morden College
The charity has two sites in south-east London, one in Blackheath and another in Beckenham. Both sites are in walking distance of shops, pubs, and restaurants. Our flats are situated in residences that sit in beautiful, secure, and quiet grounds. Purpose-built, and with all modern amenities, these flats offer our residents the chance to continue to live independently but with extra support available.
Blackheath
Our 110 flats on our Blackheath site are a mix of buildings from a beautiful Edwardian brick and timber town house that has been divided into flats to purpose built blocks that we have built on our large site. In between there are gardens, our café, chapel, bar and other facilities as well as the charity’s offices. Buses and trains nearby provide connections to destinations across London and direct trains go the Kent coast.
Beckenham
Featuring a modern blend of brick and timber construction, the 101 flats at our Beckenham site are situated in one large building with social areas accessible just down the corridor. A regular bus service just outside the main entrance takes you into Bromley town centre, and a GP Surgery is also only a few minutes away by bus, while the shops, restaurants and amenities in Beckenham area are a mile away. We run a minibus service between Ralph Perring Court and our Blackheath sites.
Cullum Welch Court
Cullum Welch Court is a self-contained 28-bed residential care home with full-time nursing care. It offers residential, nursing, and dementia care and is registered with
the Care Quality Commission, Cullum Welch Court offers private and secure accommodation in single rooms, all with en-suite facilities, wi-fi and views of our award-winning gardens. Our highly qualified and trained staff include registered nurses, healthcare assistants, activity staff, housekeepers, and caterers along with an in-house salon and hairdresser.
Why is it called a college?
Our former archivist, Elizabeth Wiggans, wrote:
“One of the questions I am often asked is ‘why College’? One bleak winter afternoon I was going through a series of dirty folded letters, untouched for over 100 years, tightly bound in pink tape. Each bundle contained the incoming letters for a year: they had obviously been stored in date order on one of those spikes which contemporaries of mine may remember being used in the 1930s by shopkeepers to hold bills. I was, frankly, finding the task tedious: most letters related to payment of rent, requests for repairs and suchlike routine matters. Then I opened a letter from: Dr Murray, Oxford, dated June 1890, and headed New English Dictionary. He was asking, for purely lexicographical purposes, for a quotation from our foundation document showing the use of the word ‘College’, and had we ever had any educational affiliation. Immediately I was transported; I had read the enthralling biography of him written by his granddaughter K M Elisabeth Murray: Caught in the web of words, and here was James Murray’s own handwriting. At the end of the afternoon I rushed home to my microprint edition of the Dictionary, and there, under College, sense 7 I found: ‘A charitable foundation of the collegiate type; a hospital, asylum, or almshouse, founded to provide residence and maintenance for poor or decayed persons elected members thereof. Retained in the title of various institutions of this kind, as Morden College, Blackheath, an asylum for decayed merchants. [and then] – 1694: Will of Sir J Morden: I will and order there be placed in the College now finished by me, etc.”
