Lancaster University
Lancaster University is a collegiate public research university in Lancaster, Lancashire, England. The university was established in 1964 by royal charter, as one of several new universities created in the 1960s.
The university was initially based in St Leonard's Gate in the city centre, before starting a move in 1967 to a purpose-built campus located on at Bailrigg, to the south of the city. The campus buildings are arranged around a central walkway known as the Spine, which is connected to a central plaza, named Alexandra Square in honour of its first chancellor, Princess Alexandra.
Lancaster is a residential collegiate university; the colleges are weakly autonomous. The eight undergraduate colleges are named after places in the historic county of Lancashire, and each has its own campus residence blocks, common rooms, administrative staff and bars.
Lancaster has ranked in the top fifteen in all three UK national league tables for the past 10 years, and received a Gold rating in the Government's 2017 and 2023 Teaching Excellence Framework. The annual income of the institution for 2024/25 was £428.4 million of which £49.3 million was from research grants and contracts, with an expenditure of £389.1 million.
Lancaster is a member of the N8 Group of research universities, which also includes the universities of Durham, Leeds, Liverpool, Manchester, Newcastle, Sheffield and York. Since 2015, Alan Milburn has been the university's chancellor.
History
Between 1958 and 1961 seven new plate glass universities were announced, including Lancaster. The choice of Lancaster as the site of the fourth new university was announced on 23 November 1961.The university was established by royal charter in 1964. The charter stipulated that Princess Alexandra of Kent be the first chancellor. She was inaugurated in 1964. The ceremony also saw the granting of various honorary degrees to dignitaries including the Prime Minister, Harold Wilson.
Princess Alexandra retired as chancellor in 2004 and was at that time the longest serving chancellor of any British university. On her departure, she gave approval for the Chancellor's Medal to be awarded for academic merit to the highest-performing undergraduates and postgraduates. Each year presentations are made to up to five graduates of taught masters' courses and up to six to the highest-performing undergraduates.
The university accepted its first students in October 1964 and there were initially 13 professors, 32 additional members of teaching and research staff, 8 library staff and 14 administrators on academic grades. The motto, "patet omnibus veritas",, was adopted. The first science students were admitted in 1965.
The university was temporarily based in the city. A lecture theatre and the university's first Junior Common Room were in Centenary Church, a former Congregational church beside the old factory premises of Waring & Gillow, which were used to accommodate the new students. Many new students were housed in the nearby town of Morecambe. The Grand Theatre was leased as a main lecture room and 112 and 114 in the St Leonard's Gate area became teaching and recreational rooms. The library occupied the old workshops of Shrigley and Hunt on Castle Hill.
Bowland and Lonsdale colleges were founded as the university's first two colleges, and all staff and students were allocated to one of the two, although the first college buildings would not be completed until 1966. The first students moved into residence and set up the first JCRs in October 1968.
The university moved from the city to the new campus at Bailrigg between 1966 and 1970.
In 2014, Lancaster University celebrated its 50th anniversary with a series of events throughout the year, involving alumni, staff, students and local community members.
Campus
Bailrigg
The purpose-built campus occupies Bailrigg, a site donated by Lancaster City Council in 1963. The campus buildings are located on a hilltop, the lower slopes of which are landscaped parkland which includes Lake Carter duck pond and the university sports fields. The lake was created in the early 1900s and was later named Lake Carter after Charles Carter, the first Vice Chancellor of the university. The site is three miles south of the city centre. Construction of the Bailrigg campus began in November 1965, with the first building completed a year later. The first on-campus student residences opened in 1968.Unlike some other campus universities, Bailrigg was designed to integrate social, residential and teaching areas. Another major feature of the design is that there is no large central Students' Union building, instead individual college facilities are used as the centre for social and recreational activities.
Vehicular and pedestrian traffic is separated: this is achieved by restricting motor vehicles to a peripheral road with a linking underpass running east–west beneath Alexandra Square. The underpass accommodates the Bailrigg bus station and was refurbished in autumn 2010. Car parking is arranged in cul-de-sacs running off the peripheral road.
The campus buildings are arranged around a central walkway known as "The Spine". The walkway runs from north to south-west and is covered for most of its length. The main architect was Gabriel Epstein of Shepheard and Epstein. Architect Peter Shepheard recalls:
"We went up there on a windy day, and it was freezing cold. Every time we opened a plan it blew away. And we said Christ! What are we going to do with these students, where are they going to sit in the sun and all that? Well, we decided, it's got to be cloisters. All of the buildings have got to touch at the ground. We then devised this system and it had an absolutely firm principle: it had a great spine down the middle where everybody walked. That led everywhere. The cars were on the outside, on both sides. When you came into the spaces things were square, they were rectangular courtyards and they were all slightly different. There were two or three essentials: one was that the covered way had to be continuous, the buildings had to be three or four storeys high and connecting to the next one. I thought it worked very well."
Between 2016 and 2018 the Spine was extensively remodelled in a project known as "Design The Spine", with the aim of replacing the decaying wooden canopy, widening bottlenecks, and creating new landscaped green spaces.
Alexandra Square is the university's main plaza. Named after the first chancellor, Princess Alexandra and is situated at the centre of the original campus. On the west side of the square is University House as well as various banks and shops. To the south-east of the square is the tallest building on campus: the 13-storey Bowland Tower, which contains accommodation and disguises the boiler room chimney.
One of the most distinctive of the Bailrigg buildings is the free-standing University Chaplaincy Centre. Opened on 2 May 1969, the architects were the Preston-based firm Cassidy & Ashton. The building has a trefoil plan with a central spire where the three circles meet. The university's former logo is based on the spire.
A plan existed to have a twin campus with another eight colleges to the east of the M6 motorway at Hazelrigg. This would have been linked to Bailrigg by a flyover. The plan was abandoned in the 1970s during a period of financial difficulties.
Library
In the south-west corner sits the library designed in 1964 by Tom Mellor and Partners, the first phase opening in September 1966, the second in July 1968 and the third in January 1971. The library was extended in 1997 and underwent a phased refurbishment in 2014, which was completed in 2016. In 2021 the Library Extension Project was completed, which introduced additional student study space and 'living walls', exhibition and research space, a 'safepod' and digital studio.A distinctive feature of the library is the large tree that grows in the centre of the ground floor study area.
Next to the library, and opened in 1998 is The Ruskin - Library, Museum and Research Centre, designed by Sir Richard MacCormac
South-West Campus
The university began expansion onto the lower slopes of Bailrigg with the development of new buildings for Graduate College in 1998, which is now part of South-West Campus. Development continued with the construction of InfoLab21 and Alexandra Park which now houses Lonsdale College, Cartmel College and the en-suite rooms of Pendle College. The development of InfoLab21 met objections, with the proposed building being described as a 'Dalek factory'.Cartmel College is built around Barker House Farm, a listed 17th-century farmhouse and outbuildings that form the centre of the college.
Health Innovation Centre
The university built a 'Health Innovation Campus' adjacent to the existing campus in 2020. The campus was billed to create 2,000 jobs and boost the local economy by around £100 million. The £29.7 million contract for construction of the first building was awarded to BAM Construction in October 2017; construction began in December 2017 and was completed in summer 2020. The building is 80,000 square feet and required the construction of an access road with a junction to the A6.Services
The Bailrigg campus hosts a range of shops and services. Services on campus include Bailrigg post office, a health centre, a pharmacy, hairdressers, Lancaster University Homes office as well as many others.Cultural venues
At the north end of campus, the university's Great Hall Complex comprises three venues open to both students and the public; the Peter Scott Gallery, the Nuffield Theatre and the Lancaster International Concert Series. In 2009, these three organisations were combined as one department by the university – initially termed 'The Public Arts' but later renamed 'Live at LICA' – with Matt Fenton overseeing this unification. In August 2015 Live at LICA was rebranded to 'Lancaster Arts at Lancaster University' to avoid confusion with the department of LICA, then director Jamie Eastman stated that; "This new name and logo communicates who we are, where we are and what we're offering."The Peter Scott Gallery is open to the public free of charge. The Gallery is located on the Bailrigg campus and houses the university's international art collection, which includes Japanese and Chinese art, antiquities, works by twentieth-century British artists including works by artists from the St Ives School, Sir Terry Frost, Wilhelmina Barns-Graham, Barbara Hepworth and William Scott. Among other British artists whose work is represented are Norman Adams, Patrick Caulfield, Elisabeth Frink, Kenneth Martin and Winifred Nicholson. Within the last fifteen years works by Andy Goldsworthy, Peter Howson and Albert Irvin have been acquired. The university collection also includes prints by significant European artists such as Dürer, Miró, Ernst and Vasarely.
Lancaster International Concert Series is the main provider of classical music in north Lancashire and Cumbria. Concerts are held within the Great Hall. Between October and March each year the series offers a varied diet of music which includes: orchestral concerts, chamber music, events for young people, jazz, family concerts and world music.
The Nuffield Theatre, a black box theatre, is one of the largest and most adaptable professional studio theatres in Europe. It presents public performances in the fields of theatre, contemporary dance and live art from some of the best-known and respected companies from the UK and abroad. The focus of the work is new and experimental practice, a focus it shares with many of the teaching and research interest of Lancaster Institute for the Contemporary Arts. The Nuffield presents up to 30 visiting professional shows a year, plus public performances by students from Theatre Studies, and the university's student theatre and dance societies and a range of local community organisations.
The Ruskin - Library, Museum and Research Centre houses archive material related to the poet, author and artist John Ruskin. It is open to the public, although only a small part of the collection is on public display at once. The building was constructed in 1997 by architect Sir Richard MacCormac. The Ruskin Whitehouse Collection housed in The Ruskin is the largest holding of books, manuscripts, photographs, drawings and watercolours by and related to John Ruskin in the world.