Rose Elizabeth Bruford established The Rose Bruford Training College of Speech and Drama in 1950, with the help of poet laureate John Masefield, and actors Laurence Olivier, and Peggy Ashcroft, who formed part of the Board of Governors. Rose Bruford "pioneered the first acting degree in 1976." The Kent Education Committee offered to lease to her Lamorbey House, an eighteenth-century, Grade II listed manor house in the Lamorbey district of Sidcup, for £5 per year. Grants helped sustain the college in its early years, and it eventually became profitable.
