Room to Grow
Room to Grow represents our vision for the future: investing in our historic estate to ensure that more outstanding postgraduate students can experience personal and professional growth through living at Goodenough College.
Room to Grow is an ambitious new fundraising campaign to expand Goodenoughthe College through the restoration and refurbishment of five Georgian terrace houses on Mecklenburgh Square. It is a plan to sustain Goodenough for the long term and can only be achieved with the help of our friends and supporters all around the world.
The success of the campaign will enable 60 more talented postgraduates to join our community each year, to strengthen our reach and respond to demand. The project will offer a mix of bedroom types to attract the widest range of students and ensure that cost is not a barrier for people.
Find out how to get involved.
"Please join me in making a generous gift to the Room to Grow campaign. This is a timely and fortunate opportunity to expand Goodenough College by bringing the historic houses at 43-47 Mecklenburgh Square back into College life.
Please take this opportunity to give back to the College; now is the time. Your gift will support generations to come, just as the College’s early benefactors supported your experience.”
Jonathan Fitzgerald, College Trustee / Chair of the Room to Grow campaign
Our project
Goodenough College provides a home and stimulating community to outstanding postgraduate students from all around the world. We plan to renovate five Grade II historic houses at 43-47 Mecklenburgh Square, allowing the College to create space for a further 60 postgraduates to join our supportive residential community in the future.
Work is just beginning, but we need further financial support to bring the project to fruition. You can help us to achieve this.
Thank you to our generous donors, Alumni and friends who have already supported Room to Grow: (click through to donor page)
Renewing five Georgian houses for future Members
Built between 1824-5, the houses are situated on the north side of Mecklenburgh Square, next to William Goodenough House (WGH) – one of the College’s two halls of residence. The houses are already integrated with William Goodenough House, with the back of the houses and the gardens overlooking current WGH accommodation.
(include aerial photograph)
The work will provide high-quality student accommodation as well as improving the fabric of the buildings, increasing their life and respecting their important place in Bloomsbury’s literary and academic heritage.
The renovation project will allow the College to:
- Adjust the internal arrangement to offer improved accommodation – in doing this careful space planning will be exercised within the constraints of the existing listed buildings.
- Retain or repair existing heritage features, such as fireplaces, decorative cornicing, plaster mouldings and timber shutters to ensure the character of the listed buildings is preserved. Works will be approved through a listed buildings application.
- Increase the buildings’ energy efficiency by making thermal upgrades to each house – new glazing will be sensitively integrated into window frames and additional internal insulation added to external walls to improve energy efficiency.
- Provide all energy and hot water to the houses by a new Air Source Heat Pump (ASHP) system, removing gas, reducing the carbon footprint of the houses and providing future resilience.
- Upgrade internal walls and floors to provide enhanced fire protection and acoustic comfort and bring the houses up to current regulatory standards.
To see more details of the project please download the sample layout and floorplans.
Our stories
Goodenough Members explain in their own words how living at Goodenough College contributed to their personal and professional growth.
