The Districts · South of the River
South of the river
North of the river has the charters; south has the nerve. Goldsmiths at New Cross — technically in London since 1889, spiritually always slightly ahead of it — taught the Young British Artists and remains the city's most argumentative arts and humanities college.
London South Bank University serves the real Southwark: one of the capital's most diverse student bodies, strong in engineering, health and the built environment, a short walk from Shakespeare's Globe and the Borough Market.
Trinity Laban keeps its dance faculty in a Deptford building that looks like a collapsed rainbow, beside the creek where the century ships used to bleed their ballast. Three houses, all south of the Thames, all better value for a pint.
The houses of the district — 3 of 36
Est. 1891 · Charter & Court
Goldsmiths, University of London
Goldsmiths · New Cross
An art-school temperament grafted onto a former naval school in New Cross. The department that reshaped twentieth-century criticism sits beside the studio that launched the YBAs — and Blur formed in its halls of residence.
Read the profile
Est. 1892 · Civic & Campus
London South Bank University
LSBU · Southwark
The Borough Polytechnic opened at the Elephant & Castle in 1892 on a site that had trained teachers since the 1810s. Its National Bakery School, founded 1894, was the first in Britain — and is still running.
Read the profile
Est. 1872 · Atelier & Stage
Trinity Laban Conservatoire of Music and Dance
Trinity Laban · Greenwich & Deptford
Music at Wren's Old Royal Naval College in Greenwich; dance in Deptford, in Herzog & de Meuron's translucent colour-washed building by the Creek. Formed by merger in 2005; the only conservatoire of its pairing.
Read the profile
See the district on the schematic