Middlesex University
Middlesex began as a cluster of Victorian institutions in the county north of London — St Katharine's College, training women teachers in Tottenham from 1878, and the Hornsey art school among them — federated into a polytechnic in 1973 and a university in 1992. The name is the old county's, though the county itself was abolished in 1965; the university keeps it alive.
Its most storied site, Trent Park — a country house estate in oak parkland — served in the Second World War as the 'M Room': a bugged country club where captured German officers talked freely, their conversations recorded by hidden microphones in the trees and fireplaces. The campus was sold in 2012; the university's flagship is now at Hendon, beside the old aerodrome where British aviation grew up.
Field notes
- Trent Park's wartime microphones — hidden in trees, a winged statue's plinth — captured generals' table talk for the war effort.
- Hendon Aerodrome next door hosted the first airmail and the RAF Museum keeps the memory.
- The university now teaches from Dubai to Mauritius — the northern suburbs went global.
Notable connections
In brief — from the field guide
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.
The live encyclopaedia brief loads when available · read the full article · reused under CC BY-SA