The Directory · Thirty-six houses
Every university in London.
From the royal charters of the 1830s to the studios of the conservatoires — each house profiled in the guide's own hand, with live encyclopaedia briefs and doors to the official sites. Filter by faculty or by house, or browse the full register.
Est. 1733 · Charter & Court
City St George's, University of London
City St George's · Clerkenwell & Tooting
An unusual 2024 marriage: a Clerkenwell civic college known for journalism and business, united with a medical school whose lineage runs to 1733 and the teaching wards of St George's Hospital.
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Est. 1791 · Charter & Court
Royal Veterinary College
RVC · Camden & Hawkshead
The oldest veterinary school in the English-speaking world, founded in Camden Town in 1791. Its graduates have attended the royal stables, the Queen's corgis and the average London fox with equal professionalism.
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Est. 1823 · Charter & Court
Birkbeck, University of London
Birkbeck · Bloomsbury
The evening university. Founded in 1823 to teach working Londoners after their working day, Birkbeck still holds its classes between six and nine — and its students still arrive from the day's work.
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Est. 1826 · Charter & Court
University College London
UCL · Bloomsbury
Founded on principles of secular, inclusive education — the first university established in London, and the first in England to admit students regardless of religion. Its Bloomsbury quadrangle conceals the Petrie Museum and the Grant Museum, both free.
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Est. 1829 · Charter & Court
King's College London
KCL · Strand
Chartered as the established church's answer to godless Gower Street. The Strand campus faces Somerset House across the world's most learned street; its medical schools descend from Guy's and St Thomas' hospitals.
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Est. 1849 · Charter & Court
Royal Holloway, University of London
RHUL · Egham, Surrey
Founded on twin pillars: Bedford College (1849), among the first higher education institutions for women in Britain, and Thomas Holloway's Royal Holloway (1879). The Founder's Building is a vast Victorian echo of Chambord set in Surrey parkland.
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Est. 1887 · Charter & Court
Queen Mary University of London
QMUL · Mile End
Began as the People's Palace, a philanthropic venture in the East End. The only Russell Group university on a self-contained campus in central London's east — its grounds stretch between the Mile End Road and the Regent's Canal.
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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.
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Est. 1895 · Charter & Court
London School of Economics
LSE · Holborn
Founded by Beatrice and Sidney Webb to study 'the social conditions of the poor.' Its campus is dense, vertical and unusually political — and its alumni and faculty hold a striking share of the world's economics Nobel Prizes.
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Est. 1899 · Charter & Court
London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine
LSHTM · Bloomsbury
Patrick Manson's school for the medicine of hot places — founded 1899, when the empire's doctors kept dying of what they were sent to cure. Research-only, postgraduate, and arranged around one of Bloomsbury's landmark interwar buildings.
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Est. 1907 · Charter & Court
Imperial College London
Imperial · South Kensington
A STEM-only institution seated in the Prince Consort's cultural quarter beside the Royal Albert Hall. The Queen's Tower is all that remains of the Imperial Institute; the labs quietly carried much of Britain's penicillin and radar history.
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Est. 1916 · Charter & Court
SOAS University of London
SOAS · Bloomsbury
The School of Oriental and African Studies — founded to train the empire's administrators, now the West's leading centre for Asia, Africa and the Middle East. Its library holds over 1.5 million items in more than 400 languages.
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Est. 1964 · Charter & Court
London Business School
LBS · Regent's Park
A graduate-only business school set in Nash's terraces beside Regent's Park. Consistently ranked among the top business schools outside the United States, and the smallest institution in this guide.
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Est. 1838 · Civic & Campus
University of Westminster
Westminster · Regent Street & Harrow
Grown from the Royal Polytechnic Institution of 1838 — arguably Britain's first polytechnic — whose Regent Street hall staged the UK's first public film screening, by the Lumière brothers, in February 1896.
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Est. 1841 · Civic & Campus
University of Roehampton
Roehampton · Roehampton
Four Victorian colleges — Whitelands (1841, among the first institutions of higher education for women), Froebel, Digby Stuart and Southlands — federated on a parkland campus beside Richmond Park.
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Est. 1848 · Civic & Campus
London Metropolitan University
London Met · Holloway & Aldgate
Formed in 2002 from two civic universities — North London and London Guildhall — with deepest roots in the City of London College's evening classes of 1848. One of the most diverse student bodies in the country.
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Est. 1850 · Civic & Campus
St Mary's University, Twickenham
St Mary's · Twickenham
The oldest Catholic university in the UK, founded as a teacher-training college in 1850 — now on a leafy campus beside Horace Walpole's Strawberry Hill, and a quietly serious school of sport science.
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Est. 1860 · Civic & Campus
University of West London
UWL · Ealing & Brentford
Ealing's teaching colleges, the London College of Music (1887) and a nursing lineage from Queen Charlotte's Hospital, federated as Thames Valley and renamed West London in 2010 — with Ealing Studios just down the road.
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Est. 1878 · Civic & Campus
Middlesex University
Middlesex · Hendon
Grown from Victorian teacher-training and art colleges in the northern suburbs — St Katharine's (1878) and Hornsey art school among them. Its Trent Park campus kept a country house and, in the war, a secret listening post for captured German generals.
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Est. 1890 · Civic & Campus
University of Greenwich
Greenwich · Greenwich & Medway
Among England's first polytechnics at Woolwich in 1890 — now a university whose principal campus is Wren's Old Royal Naval College at Greenwich, lecturing in a UNESCO World Heritage Site.
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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.
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Est. 1898 · Civic & Campus
University of East London
UEL · Docklands & Stratford
From the West Ham Technical Institute of 1898 to a waterfront campus on the Royal Albert Dock and a Stratford site beside the Olympic park — the university of the city's eastern edge, and of its rebuilds.
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Est. 1899 · Civic & Campus
Kingston University
Kingston · Kingston upon Thames
A technical institute and art school on the Thames since 1899, in the ancient coronation town of the Saxon kings — the Coronation Stone still sits by the guildhall, between the university and the river.
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Est. 1966 · Civic & Campus
Brunel University London
Brunel · Uxbridge
A 1960s plate-glass university on the Uxbridge plateau, named for the engineer whose bridges, tunnels and ships built the nineteenth century. Engineering-first in temperament, single-campus by design.
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Est. 1984 · Civic & Campus
Regent's University London
Regent's · Regent's Park
A private, non-profit university inside Regent's Park — on the campus built for Bedford College, the women's college whose Egham successor fills another page of this guide. American in style, London in situation.
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Est. 1822 · Atelier & Stage
Royal Academy of Music
RAM · Marylebone
Britain's oldest conservatoire, founded in 1822 beside Regent's Park — with a museum of instruments whose Strads are played by students, and Arthur Sullivan as its first scholarship boy.
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Est. 1837 · Atelier & Stage
Royal College of Art
RCA · South Kensington & Battersea
The world's most influential art and design school — postgraduate only, from its Government School of Design origins in 1837, and regularly ranked first globally for art and design.
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Est. 1847 · Atelier & Stage
Architectural Association School of Architecture
AA · Bedford Square
Founded in 1847 by a nineteen-year-old and run by its students ever since — the independent architecture school in Bedford Square that taught Zaha Hadid, Rem Koolhaas and Richard Rogers their trade.
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Est. 1854 · Atelier & Stage
University of the Arts London
UAL · Six colleges
Europe's largest university for art, design and fashion — six colleges, from Central Saint Martins at King's Cross to the London College of Fashion, with a Turner Prize record no institution matches.
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Est. 1861 · Atelier & Stage
London Academy of Music & Dramatic Art
LAMDA · Barons Court
Founded as a music academy in 1861 whose drama department quietly took over the family business. Now at Barons Court, west of the river — and the oldest drama school in Britain by most reckonings.
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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.
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Est. 1880 · Atelier & Stage
Guildhall School of Music & Drama
Guildhall · City of London
The City of London's own music and drama school, founded by the Corporation in 1880 and now seated between the Barbican's concrete estate and its arts centre — stagecraft in the middle of the maze.
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Est. 1882 · Atelier & Stage
Royal College of Music
RCM · South Kensington
Founded by royal charter beside the Royal Albert Hall — its students rehearse a few steps from where they will debut. Holst, Vaughan Williams and Britten are the alumni triumvirate.
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Est. 1904 · Atelier & Stage
Royal Academy of Dramatic Art
RADA · Bloomsbury
Herbert Beerbohm Tree's drama school, founded in 1904 in Gower Street townhouses. The smallest institution in this guide by student count — and among the most name-checked on any cast list.
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Est. 1906 · Atelier & Stage
Royal Central School of Speech & Drama
Central · Swiss Cottage
Founded by Elsie Fogerty at the Royal Albert Hall in 1906 to train the voice, moved to Swiss Cottage in the fifties. The conservatoire for acting, stage management and the technical crafts — Judi Dench's school.
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Est. 1932 · Atelier & Stage
The Courtauld Institute of Art
Courtauld · Somerset House
The study of art history as a single-subject vocation, founded by the industrialist Samuel Courtauld around his collection of Impressionists — Manet's Bar at the Folies-Bergère among them — now at Somerset House.
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Every card opens an independent field-guide profile with links to the official site — this guide is editorial, not administrative. Student numbers and Nobel affiliate counts are indicative, drawn from the most recent published HESA returns and institutional reports. Nobel figures include alumni, faculty and long-term researchers. Always verify directly with the institution before applying.
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Three houses
Charter & Court, Civic & Campus, Atelier & Stage.
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