Коперс Хилл: Британдық инженерлік колледжінің тарихы

The Royal Indian Engineering College (or RIEC) was a British college of Civil Engineering run by the India Office to train civil engineers for service in the Indian Public Works Department. It was located on the Cooper's Hill estate, near Egham, Surrey. It functioned from 1872 until 1906, when its work was transferred to India. The college was colloquially referred to as Cooper's Hill and I. C. E. College (I. C. E. being an acronym for Indian Civil Engineering). The India Office bought the Cooper's Hill estate for £55,000 in 1870; and the college was formally opened on 5 August 1872, with Chesney as its first President. The college educated about 50 students a year, who paid fees of £150 each. The curriculum included pure and applied mathematics, construction, architectural design, surveying, mechanical drawing, geometry, physics, geology, accounts, Hindustani, and the history and geography of India. By the late 1870s the college was training more civil engineers than were required in India; but, rather than scaling down its activities, Chesney broadened them. From 1878, the college began to train candidates for the Indian Telegraph Department. From 1881, it began to train candidates for non Indian services, such as the Royal Engineers, the Egyptian Government, and the Uganda Railway. In 1885, the first forestry school in England was established at Cooper's Hill, with William Schlich as the founding director. In the face of competition from new training facilities for engineers elsewhere (notably at the new "redbrick" universities), the college closed on 13October 1906.

The principal building at Cooper's Hill was a mansion house erected c. 1865 for the unprincipled company promoter, Baron Albert Grant, to a semi Gothic design by F. & H. Francis. The conversion of the house for educational use, the design of the interiors, and the addition of a new south wing (including a chapel) were undertaken by the architect Sir Matthew Digby Wyatt.

After the college moved out in 1906, the buildings stood empty until bought in 1911 by Baroness Cheylesmore for use as a private home. Later, the site became Shoreditch College of Education, a teacher's college specializing in handicraft education, before becoming the Runnymede Campus of Brunel University (until 2007). The site was acquired in 2016 by the Audley Group for conversion into a retirement village, due to open in early 2019.

The college is mentioned by Rudyard Kipling in his novel Stalky & Co. (1899): one of the main characters, M'Turk, following schooling at the fictionalised United Services College, is supposed to be "going up for Cooper's Hill".

Lt Col. Sir George Tomkyns Chesney, 1872–1880
Gen. Sir Alexander Taylor, 1880–1896
Col. John Pennycuick, 1896–1900
Col. Sir John Walter Ottley, 1900–1906