[3] It offers courses in a wide variety of fields, including art and design, fashion, languages, drama, dance, music, health and humanities.

In the early 1880s, philanthropist Emma Cons and her supporters took over the Royal Victoria Hall, (the "Old Vic") a boozy, rowdy home of melodrama, and turned it into the Royal Victoria Coffee and Music Hall to provide inexpensive entertainment "purged of innuendo in word and action".

The programme included music-hall turns with opera recitals, temperance meetings, and, from 1882, lectures every Tuesday by eminent scientists.

Local enthusiasm for these "penny lectures" and success in attracting substantial philanthropic funding, led in 1889 to the opening of Morley Memorial College for Working Men and Women.

Samuel Morley is buried at Dr Watts' Walk, Abney Park Cemetery, in Stoke Newington, London.

The two split in the 1920s, when Emma's niece and successor Lilian Baylis raised funds to acquire a separate site nearby.

A further bronze curtain-wall extension followed in 1973, designed by John Winter, and another in 1982 clad in corrugated Corten steel, on the eastern side of King Edward's Walk.

He successfully steered the transition from Local Authority College to freestanding Further Education Corporation, including negotiating freehold ownership of previously shared use sites while developing a strategic partnership with the Local Authority (which included providing its adult education programme and partnership in regeneration projects in North Kensington).

[13] The college's second Principal, Joanna Gaukroger, was the driving force behind the plan to build a flagship centre at the Chelsea site.

Mike Jutsum, the college's third Principal, added a significant new dimension to its work by securing contracts to provide education in prisons and a young offenders institution in West London.

[16] Although the contract wasn't permanent it provided a valuable financial breathing space at a challenging economic time for Colleges nationally.

In 2016, the borough announced that it had bought the college's Wornington Campus in North Kensington and planned to redevelop the site for housing, causing widespread opposition from the local community.

[1] The main Morley College campus is located in the Waterloo district of London, on the South Bank.

From 2017 to 2019 the college underwent extensive refurbishment to the front entrance of the building, including a new foyer and Morley Radio station.

Morley Gallery occupies the whole of the ground floor with six imposing windows facing Westminster Bridge Road and King Edward Walk, London, SE1.

The Theatre School enjoyed success during the 1980s and early 1990s under the direction of Paul A Thompson (who was resident dramatist with the Royal Shakespeare Company in 1977 and with the National Theatre 1977 to 1979) and Brian Croucher (who played a number of roles in TV shows including EastEnders, Blake's 7, Doctor Who, The Bill, Casualty, Doctors and Edge of Darkness).

Companies producing plays in 2005 included: Short and Girlie, Bedlamb, Twice as Loud, Mulabanda Productions, and Acting the Goat.