Building on history, looking to the future
Devonport House stands within the Maritime Greenwich UNESCO World Heritage Site, on the banks of the Thames, just across the road from the Old Royal Naval College and looking out to Canary Wharf, one of the world's leading financial and business districts. Its setting is shaped by the baroque grandeur of Sir Christopher Wren's naval buildings opposite, framed by the greenery of Greenwich Park.
The site's story stretches back further than most people realise. Part of it was first developed in 1783 to 1784 as a school for Greenwich Hospital, designed by William Newton to serve around 200 boys connected to the hospital's charitable mission. As the hospital's needs changed, the building became an infirmary in 1821, with further additions through the Victorian era. In 1923, the site was acquired by the Seamen's Hospital Society, and soon after, Sir Edwin Cooper, a Royal Gold Medallist whose other work includes Lloyd's of London, designed the building that stands today. Constructed between 1925 and 1929, with further phases completed in 1933 to 1934, it served as a nurses' home for the adjacent hospital until 1993. It was later converted into a University conference centre and hotel in the 1990s. Now, in the largest capital transformation the University has ever undertaken, Devonport House is being reimagined as a landmark home for Greenwich Business School.
Bristol-based Stride Treglown, working alongside conservation specialists Purcell, have designed a scheme that removes the 1990s conference centre entirely while honouring the building's original character. Listed wood-panelled rooms, staircases and fireplaces will be sensitively restored, and the project has the backing of key heritage and civic stakeholders, having been granted full planning permission by the Royal Borough of Greenwich in March 2025.
Devonport House isn't just being restored for the University, it's being opened up to Greenwich itself. Most of the ground floor will be public, with a new café and a 120-seat theatre for community programming, alongside landscaped green space for people to gather and relax.
That sense of place extends beyond heritage. Sitting minutes from Canary Wharf, Devonport House gives Greenwich Business School a rare platform where maritime history meets the pulse of modern industry, and gives students direct proximity to future career opportunities. This reflects Greenwich's own history: pioneering the sandwich placement and year in industry as far back as the 1930s, a model since adopted across the UK.
I figured it would only make sense to study tourism in one of the top tourist destinations in the world. Both the city and the historical location of Greenwich made it the perfect place.
- Evie Hawkins, Tourism Management with Language
Design that honours the past, and reconnects the place
The design's guiding principle is simple: let the historic building speak, and open it up to the people around it.
The 1990s conference centre, which cut Devonport House off from the rest of the campus, is being fully demolished. In its place, a new extension connects to the original building through a glazed atrium, a central move in the design. The whole façade, including a reinstated corner of the historic building, will be visible from within and sunlit from the glazed roof above. New bridges and balconies let people appreciate the building from viewpoints that have never existed before.
The public realm changes matter just as much as the building itself. A car park that has long sat between Devonport House and the National Maritime Museum is being removed entirely, replaced with new pedestrian routes through the World Heritage Site and calmer, quieter surroundings. Two new public squares will give students and the local community welcoming, dynamic spaces to meet. Away from the squares, quieter green pockets and seating nooks, positioned where there are no windows to disturb, offer places to pause. Green corridors will link the site to Greenwich Park, introducing wildlife and biodiversity into a space that has been underused for decades.
Every part of this, the restored rooms, the reopened views, the new landscape, is designed around the same idea: a building that was gradually closed off from Greenwich should become one of its most open and connected places.
What your gift can unlock
Philanthropic support will bring the full ambition of this restoration to life, from the conservation of listed features to the creation of new public spaces that open Devonport House to the whole Greenwich community. Naming opportunities are available across the building, from restored rooms and the theatre to the landscaped gardens, offering donors a lasting way to be part of Devonport House's story.
Because of philanthropy, the life-changing access of yesterday can be reinvented in the iconic setting of today, to create the future-proof business education of tomorrow.
