History
The Royal Agricultural University was founded as the Royal Agricultural College in 1842, at a meeting of the Fairford and Cirencester Farmers’ Club. Concerned by the lack of government support for education, Robert Jeffreys-Brown addressed the meeting on the "Advantages of a Specific Education for Agricultural Pursuits". A prospectus was circulated, a general committee appointed and Earl Bathurst was elected President. Funds were raised by public subscription: much of the support came from the wealthy landowners and farmers of the day; there was no Government support. The first 25 students were admitted in September 1845.
Queen Victoria granted the Royal Charter to the University in 1845 and sovereigns have been patrons ever since, visiting the University in every reign. His Royal Highness the Prince of Wales became President in 1984.
The college gained full university status in 2013.
Read more about this topic: Royal Agricultural College
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“Both place and time were changed, and I dwelt nearer to those parts of the universe and to those eras in history which had most attracted me.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“If usually the “present age” is no very long time, still, at our pleasure, or in the service of some such unity of meaning as the history of civilization, or the study of geology, may suggest, we may conceive the present as extending over many centuries, or over a hundred thousand years.”
—Josiah Royce (1855–1916)
“Hence poetry is something more philosophic and of graver import than history, since its statements are rather of the nature of universals, whereas those of history are singulars.”
—Aristotle (384–322 B.C.)