University of Hull

The University of Hull is a public university, founded in 1927, located in Kingston upon Hull, a city in the East Riding of Yorkshire, England. The main university campus is located in Hull and there is a smaller campus in Scarborough on the North Yorkshire coast. The main campus is home to the Hull York Medical School, a joint initiative with the University of York. Students are served by Hull University Union. The University’s Brynmor Jones Library was the workplace of the poet Philip Larkin who served as its Head Librarian for over thirty years. The Philip Larkin Society organises activities in remembrance of Larkin including the Larkin 25 festival which was organised during 2010 in partnership with the University. The Library was also the workplace of former poet laureate Andrew Motion. Lord Wilberforce was chancellor of the University from 1978 until 1994. Robert Armstrong was the chancellor from 1994 to 2006. Virginia Bottomley was installed as the current chancellor in April 2006. Alumni of the University of Hull are especially prominent in the fields of politics, academia, journalism and drama. They include former MP and later Deputy Prime Minister Lord Prescott (John Prescott), former MP and Deputy Leader of the Labour Party Lord Hattersley (Roy Hattersley), politician and author Chris Mullin, social scientist Lord Giddens (Anthony Giddens), poet Roger McGough, journalist John McCarthy and film director, playwright and screenwriter Anthony Minghella. The foundation stone of University College Hull, then an external college of the University of London, was laid in 1927 by Prince Albert, the Duke of York (who later became king as George VI). The college was built on land donated by Hull City Council and by two local benefactors, Thomas Ferens and G F Grant. A year later the first 14 departments, in pure sciences and the arts, opened with 39 students. The college at that time consisted of one building, now named the Venn building (after the mathematician John Venn, who was born in Hull). The building now houses the administrative centre of the university. Other early buildings include the Cohen Building, which originally housed the college library, and Staff House, built in 1948 as the Student’s Union. Another early structure was the Chemistry Building, built in 1953. With the rapid expansion of student numbers which took place in the 1950s many many academic departments were housed in temporary buildings, colloquially known as ‘huts,’ which gave the campus the feel of an ‘academic army camp.’ Though many of the buildings on Hull’s campus are of red brick it is not a redbrick university in the strictest sense of the term, as it was not founded as part of the civic university movement of the late Victorian and Edwardian eras. Hull, with its origins in the 1920s, has been categorised as a ‘younger civic university’ (also referred to as a “Whitetile university”) and it is placed between the ‘redbricks’ and the ‘plateglass universities’ founded in the 1960s. The university’s expansion in recent decades has seen the addition of a variety of building styles: from the traditional older buildings, through 1960s teaching blocks, to modern additions. The first principal of the college was Arthur E. Morgan (1926–1935), the second was John H Nicholson (1935–1956), who also served as the university’s first vice-chancellor when the college was granted university status.