Whitgift Centre
| Whitgift Centre | |
|---|---|
 |
|
| General information | |
| Type | Shopping centre/Offices and Car park |
| Town or city | Croydon, London |
| Current tenants | Boots The Chemists, Holland & Barrett, New Look, River Island, Sainsbury's Central |
| Inaugurated | 1970 |
| Client | Howard Holdings plc |
| Owner | Whitgift Foundation |
| Landlord | 75%: Administrators of Howard Holdings plc, on behalf of Royal London Asset Management/Irish Bank Resolution Corporation 25%: Whitgift Foundation |
| Technical details | |
| Floor area | 1,300,000 square feet (120,000 m2) |
| Design and construction | |
| Architect | Anthony Minoprio |
| Architecture firm | Geddes Architects |
| Main contractor | Fitzroy Robinson & Partners |
The Whitgift Centre is a large shopping centre and office development in the centre of Croydon, London, opened in stages between 1968 and 1970. The centre currently comprises 1,302,444 sq ft (121,001.0 m2) of retail space and was the largest covered shopping development in Greater London until the opening of Westfield London at White City in October 2008. The shopping centre was used in the titles of the first series of Terry & June. Hammerson and Westfield have formed a joint venture to redevelop the shopping mall and combine it with neighbouring Centrale.
The name comes from John Whitgift, a former Archbishop of Canterbury. The freehold of the Centre is owned by the Whitgift Foundation, a registered charity in England & Wales. They sold a long term lease to a company 75% owned and controlled by Howard Holdings plc, and 25% by the Whitgift Foundation themselves. Designed by Geddes Architects, the centre was built on the site of Whitgift Middle School, renamed Trinity School of John Whitgift in 1954, which moved to a new site at Shirley Park in 1965.
The centre was designed by Anthony Minoprio and built between 1965 and 1970 by Fitzroy Robinson & Partners. Commenting in 1971, architectural historians Ian Nairn and Nikolaus Pevsner stated that "most of the architectural details are banal, but the centre functions unusually well as a shopping precinct".
In the first couple of decades of its existence, the Whitgift Centre had no roof and was open to the elements.
The first shop to open was Boots on 17 October 1968, and the centre itself was officially opened in October 1970 by the Duchess of Kent. In the middle of the Whitgift Centre there was a Roman-themed pub called The Forum. In the 1990s, the centre was almost completely rebuilt to an atrium design, and the Forum pub was demolished.
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