At the official site for the present Spurgeon's College here we read of the history of the college.
It remains a mark of a remarkable man that the College that bears his name was founded by Charles Haddon Spurgeon when he was just 22 years of age. His vision was to train others to share in the task of bringing the ‘Good News’ to a needy world. His maxim ‘from the heart of London into all the world’ resulted in his students going to every continent to preach the gospel.
The original name for the college was ‘The Pastor's College’ and Spurgeon took an active part in its life right up to his death in 1892. Every Friday afternoon he would lecture his students and subsequently these lectures were published. He was President of the College and was called upon to give an annual report. In one such report he wrote, ‘I would far sooner do the work than talk about it.’ For the first 15 years of the College's existence it was financed largely from Spurgeon's own resources and was indeed his own.
Later the apostrophe was moved when others took a greater share in its government and financing, and it became ‘The Pastors' College’. For many years the College was housed within the Metropolitan Tabernacle at the Elephant and Castle in London.
There was no residential accommodation and when the present College building was made available in 1923 it allowed students to live on site. At this point the name was changed again, now it would simply be known as ‘Spurgeon's College’.
Many stories could be told of former students, of Sylvester Whitehouse who was martyred in China in 1900; of W Y Fullerton who wrote the hymn that remains a favourite today, ‘I cannot tell why he whom angels worship’.
One story dates from 1860, just four years after the College was founded. A former student, Mark Noble, went out to the prairie lands of Nebraska, USA, farmed a small holding and rode around the country contacting settlers until he gathered a church which remains to this day. By 1956, one hundred years after it was founded, a total of 465 students had gone overseas.
