HRH The Duchess of Cornwall will bring the spotlight to Writtle College in Chelmsford, Essex on Monday 24 October.
The Duchess will tour Writtle College, founded in 1893, accompanied by Lord Petre and a number of Essex Civic Dignitaries. Specialising in subject areas relating to environmental design, equestrianism, agriculture and animal sciences, the courses on offer at Writtle are of particular interest to The Duchess. HRH is a keen supporter of the arts, enjoys gardening and is well known for her love of horses.
HRH’s visit will begin at the College’s Main Campus - The Duchess will drop in on a Higher Education lecture before moving swiftly on to tour the gardens of the Writtle College estate. Along the way The Duchess will meet Beryl Wyatt MBE, an Assistant Gardener who has worked at the College for over 40 years, and Further Education horticulture students who will be entering the ‘2012 Ideal Home Show Young Gardeners of the Year’ competition, which is in association with the Prince of Wales’s Foundation for the Built Environment.
Writtle College has a wealth of outdoor and indoor horticultural resources - after touring the external gardens, The Duchess will greet Postgraduate students from postharvest, a course which looks into the way fresh horticultural produce must be handled, transported and stored to maintain quality from grower to consumer, and students from our floristry course inside the temperate tropical glasshouse which houses a number of tropical plants and a Koi Carp fish pond.
Finally, The Duchess will visit the recently opened Titchmarsh Centre for Animal Studies, named after and officially opened by the College’s Patron, Alan Titchmarsh. Here, The Duchess will meet more students and staff of the College, talk with members of the Essex mounted police, and tour the animal unit.