University of Bath - History

History

The University of Bath can trace its roots to a technical school established in Bristol 100 years earlier, the Bristol Trade School of 1856. In 1885 the school became part of the Society of Merchant Venturers and was renamed the Merchant Venturers' Technical College (whose alumni include the physicists Paul Dirac and Peter Higgs), an institution founded as a school in 1595. Meanwhile, in the neighbouring city of Bath, a pharmaceutical school, the Bath School of Pharmacy, was founded in 1907. This became part of the Technical College in 1929.

The college came under the control of the Bristol Education Authority in 1949; it was renamed then the Bristol College of Technology, and in 1960 the Bristol College of Science and Technology, when it became one of ten technical colleges under the umbrella of the Ministry of Education. The college was mainly housed in the former Muller's Orphanage at Ashley Down, Bristol, which still houses part of the City of Bristol College whilst the remainder has been converted into residential housing.

In 1963, the Robbins Committee report paved the way for the college (along with a number of other institutions) to assume university status.

Although the grounds of Kings Weston House, in Bristol, were briefly considered — which then, and until 1969, accommodated the College's School of Architecture and Building Engineering — the City of Bristol was unable to offer the expanding college an appropriately sized single site. Following discussions between the College Principal and the Director of Education in Bath, an agreement was reached to provide the college with a new home in Claverton Down, Bath, on a greenfield site overlooking the city.

Construction of the purpose-built campus began in 1964, with the first building, now known as 4 South, completed in 1965, and the Royal Charter was granted in 1966. In November 1966, the first degree ceremony was held at the Assembly Rooms in Bath. Over the subsequent decade, new buildings were added as the campus took shape.

The city records reveal that there were plans in the mid-19th Century to build a college of the University of Oxford on the very same site, which would have resulted in a university of a very different character. Such plans, however, did not come to fruition.

The university logo features the so-called Gorgon's head which is taken, via the University's coat of arms, from a Roman sculpture found in the city.