Wills Memorial Building - Architecture

Architecture

The building's dominant feature is Wills Tower. The tower is reinforced concrete faced with Bath and Clipsham stone, with carving designed in collaboration with Jean Hahn of King's Heath Guild, Birmingham. At 215 feet (68 metres) height it is over twice the height of nearby Cabot Tower. It is 16 meters square and ornamented with heraldic shields.

It is topped by an octagonal lantern which houses Great George (England's sixth-largest bell, weighing over 9.5 tonnes) which strikes on the hour.

In addition to the Great Hall there is a General Library, Reception Room and Council Chamber and another 50 rooms including some teaching space such as seminar rooms and lecture theatres. In the Entrance Hall are two ceremonial staircases. The building is also used as a conference venue.

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