University of Winchester - History

History

The origins of the University of Winchester began in 1840 when the Winchester Diocesan Training School was founded as a Church of England foundation for the training of elementary schoolmasters. The school was initially quite small, located in a house at 27 St Swithun Street, Winchester. In 1847 the school moved to Wolvesey, the Bishop’s Palace, where it became Winchester Training College. Following an outbreak of cholera at Wolvesey a new building (now the main building on the university's King Alfred Campus) was established for the college in 1862, on land granted by the cathedral at West Hill, Winchester. The college was renamed King Alfred's College in 1928.

King Alfred's College trained thousands of teachers, at first men only, but women as well from 1960. With the sudden change in government policy in the early 1970s, the college first looked for partners to merge with and also sought to diversify its provision. Its educational partner, the University of Southampton, was lukewarm about offering other forms of degrees, so the college sought approval for its own BEd and then BA degrees from the Council for National Academic Awards (CNAA). Interdisciplinary degrees in History and English with Drama, Archaeology and American Studies were first offered. Further programmes followed in the 1980s, but it was only when the college expanded in the early 1990s that CNAA approved a modular course that allowed a large number of new fields of study to grow at undergraduate level within a common regulatory framework. At the same time masters programmes were approved alongside the MEd programme. With the CNAA's demise in 1992, the college became accredited by the University of Southampton resuming a partnership broken off 18 years earlier.

When in 1995 the UK government published criteria by which colleges could become universities, King Alfred's under its principal, Professor John Dickinson, set itself the target of becoming a university, by first acquiring Taught and later Research Degree Awarding Powers. Professor Paul Light, principal from 2000, led the institution through the successful application for Taught Degree Awarding Powers in 2003 and a change of name to University College Winchester in 2004. His leadership culminated in the award of university title in 2005, achieving the target set 10 years earlier and entitling him to be the first Vice-Chancellor of the University of Winchester. In August 2008 the university was granted Research Degree Awarding Powers.