Newbold College recently announced that it will reduce its operations to focus on pastoral training. The college had been offering degrees in business management, English literature, history, media studies, fine arts, and psychology, as well as religion.
On September 30th, Newbold announced that it had adopted a new “framework for operation” that would give “sole focus and strategic direction to the education and preparation of ministers, evangelists, frontline church planters, leaders, and theologians.”
Trans-European Division president and board chair Raafat Kamal affirmed the continuing importance of Newbold as a seminary or Bible college, but the decision was made to discontinue other majors, degrees and courses of study. “Most notable in our conversation”, says Kamal, “was the consensus that Newbold exists first and foremost to train pastors and other Church leaders to serve TED members – and now is the time to urgently renew this focus.”
The English Language Center will cease to operate at the end of the current semester, in December 2020. Business and Humanities courses will cease to operate at the end of the current academic year, in May 2021.
Newbold is working with Andrews University, Washington Adventist University and appropriate UK universities to ensure that all students will be able to complete their degrees without being disadvantaged academically or financially.
Newbold College of Higher Education was founded in 1901 as Duncombe Hall College, in Holloway, north London. During World War II, it moved to Newbold Revel, near Rugby, Warwickshire, and then later to Packwood Haugh, Warwickshire. For some reason, the name Newbold stuck, even though the college was based there only briefly. In 1945, after the war, the college purchased Moor Close, in Binfield, Berkshire, the college’s present location.
Moor Close is a red brick Jacobethan house built in 1881. It was extended and altered around 1914, with a complete Jacobethan interior, by architect and garden designer Oliver Hill for financier Charles Birch Crisp. The grounds contain a good example of an English manor garden, with a number of terraces on different levels, many linked by circular steps, as well as courts, pergolas, staircases, balustrades and lily pools.