Issue 45

20 May - 2 June 1997

Birthday celebrations at Silwood Park

Dr Hefin Jones

Just what does go on at Silwood Park? This year provides the best excuse to find out! 1997 marks the fiftieth anniversary of Imperial College at Silwood Park and all our colleagues from South Kensington are invited to take part in the celebrations on 10 - 11 July 1997.

To many in South Kensington, Silwood Park may be just a name that they come across in the Imperial College telephone directory or in the Annual Report. To those who live and work at Silwood it is the hub of an environmental research and teaching centre whose international reputation is second to none.

In 1947, Imperial College acquired Silwood Park to provide a more suitable research and teaching site for biology than the main London campus. Those familiar with Silwood will recall the Manor House. Designed by Alfred Waterhouse (designer of the Natural History Museum) the house was built in 1878, replacing an evidently beautiful Palladian mansion, built only 90 years earlier for Sir James Sibbald - who in his turn knocked down the medieval Sunninghill Manor House.

The College's activities at Silwood have expanded continuously. The first occupant was the then Department of Zoology and Applied Entomology, but space was so valuable that within a few years Silwood was housing about half the academic and research staff of the department we now know as the Department of Biology.

Geophysics then developed an experimental site on the far side of the Park and meteorology later joined them and built a meteorological tower just high enough not to be visible from Windsor Castle.

The University of London's test reactor was constructed in 1965, expanded in 1971, and has been reestablished as the Centre for Analytical Research in the Environment.

Additional biology laboratories were added in 1966, built as the first step in a major development plan. However, the next step took over 20 years, when two buildings were sold to finance the new Garden Wood Biology Buildings. Silwood Park also boasts its Technology Transfer Centre and the new CABI building which houses the International Institute of Biological Control and the Crop Protection Library.

The latest development, built in 1990, is the NERC Centre for Population Biology. A multi-million pound venture, its aim is to develop the science of population biology. The building houses a unique, purpose-built environmental facility, called Ecotron, for studying small communities of plants and animals under controlled conditions.

While undergraduates still remain at the College's main campus in South Kensington, Silwood now houses a large graduate community of over 100 MSc and PhD students. Many of these students come from overseas, and some 50 countries have been represented at Silwood over the years.

We welcome all our London colleagues, particularly those who have never ventured to visit their country cousins, to come and join us on 10 - 11 July 1997 to celebrate Silwood's Golden Anniversary.

On these two days the scientific community at Silwood will open its doors to exhibit its internationally renowned research work, its teaching and its new facilities. The open days also include an exhibition outlining the Silwood of past and present. Further information can be obtained from Mrs Diana Anderson at Silwood Park. Telephone 01344 294207 (Silwood extension 207), fax 01344 874957, email d.anderson@ic.ac.uk, Website (http://www.bio.ic.ac.uk).

Dr Hefin Jones is a member of the research staff in the Centre for Population Biology, based at Silwood Park.