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A brief history of the
University of Lancaster
L
Daniel Snape & Mathew Gillings
ancaster University is the place that over 12,000 of us are lucky enough to consider a home away from home. Everyone who sets foot
on our campus plays a role in the success of our world-leading higher education institution, and everyone leaves with a very unique story to
tell.
Its rise to international esteem in just 50 years is down to the incredible research-centred work of staff and students, which has transformed
the University into a
stimulating hub of academia. For a few years of our lives, Lancaster is our home and workplace; we develop a whole new family and grow
into respectable adults
- ready to take on the world. Whilst the facts are in writing, there’s much more to Lancaster University than originally meets the eye. The past 50 years have been quite an
adventure for staff and students alike, who often found this institution at the centre of a whole series of controversies. In this 50th anniversary edition, SCAN takes a look back
at some of the University’s greatest highs and trickiest lows. They may look strange to us in the year 2014, but one thing is clear: every single one of these events is a part of our
history and has helped to make Lancaster University the fantastic institution it is today. That, we feel, is something worth celebrating.
The establishment of Lancaster
University was made final back in
1961 and St. Leonard’s House, the
University’s first site in Lancaster’s city centre, opened in 1964.
Talks about a university college
in Lancaster were originally initiated by city alderman Douglas
Clift in 1947, but the idea was
quickly aborted. Although the
city council were eager to have
their own university, the people
of Lancaster weren’t very aware
of the implications. Long into
the twentieth century, Lancaster
had remained an outpost of old
English tradition. With a town
blacksmith in the directory just a
few years before the University’s
creation, the city was coloured
by flat caps and Victorian factory buildings – one works’ 250
foot chimney crumbled violently
in February 1966. Higher education was almost unheard of in
Lancaster, and many thought of
the new university as just another
school.
Upon its foundation,
Lancaster was
transformed into
something of a
student metropolis
and our first intake
was particularly
free-spirited in
nature.
Lancaster University has always had a somewhat left-wing
ethos, not least because of the
views of the founding Vice Chancellor, Charles Carter. Carter was
a very liberal gentleman, released
from Strangeways Prison not 20
years earlier for being a conscientious objector. Carter trusted
his staff and students to act in the
University’s best interest whilst
flying its flag. Although this occasionally backfired, his values
and energy brought learning and
hope to an otherwise unknown,
northern, working-class town.
In October 1964, the first student intake of 296 undergraduates and 36 graduates reached St
Leonard’s House - a 6,400 square
metre furniture factory on the
site of a medieval leper hospital.
Laboratories were on the second
and third floors and the library
was in the basement. For many,
this was the first time they saw
the University. Although higher
education placements were delivered through a national body
in Lancaster’s first year they had
no open days, no interviews, no
clear entry qualifications, and
only a tiny red and grey prospectus. A survey by the new student
newspaper, John O’Gauntlet, described Lancaster as a “dead area”
and “backward”.
The first Student Representative Council (SRC) was held, with
joint posts to ensure equal representation for the two founding colleges Bowland and
Lonsdale,
establishing
a number of societies
for music, literature,
bowls, judo, speleology, ideology and so
on. The University’s
16 founding subjects inc YY