Day 154 - Royal Holloway

I had business today at City, University of London, so I abandoned poor Angela to enjoy a sunny day in the Cotswolds and off I went on the train south. With the difficult weather we had last week, I had to postpone my after work drink with my former Dean at the University of Surrey, Bob O'Keefe. Bob is now the Dean of the Faculty of Management, Economics and Law at Royal Holloway, University of London. He and I have stayed in touch over the years since I left Surrey to return to Canada and I had been meaning to catch up with him while I was here on my sabbatical leave. 

You might be wondering why the different names associated with the University of London. That is because there is a network of 18 schools under the University of London umbrella.  Schools such as Kings College, University College London, London School of Economics and Political Science, Queen Mary, London Business School, City, and Royal Holloway (and a few more less familiar sounding). Graduates of the schools all receive a University of London degree.  So today, after I was finished with my meetings at City, which is located in the heart of London, I took a train from Waterloo Station out to Egham, a small town west of London and the site of Royal Holloway.

At the top of the hill

When I arrived at Egham, I realized that the university was located above the town on a hillside. It was about a 25-minute walk up and I was at first concerned that I would have a difficult time meandering up the streets, but I quickly realized that one only needs to join the procession of students making their way to the school.

Once you get to the edge of campus you continue through a series of pathways that are surrounded by woods. At the top you emerge into the open to find the grandest building one can find on a university campus. This Victorian building built in Gothic Revival, known as Founders, was the original college and now houses faculty and administration offices on the lower levels and it continues to act as a student residence on the upper floors (more on that later). It has its own chapel and art museum. This building is surrounded by more modern buildings where the various faculties and student residences are housed.

Thomas and Jane Holloway

The history of the university is pretty interesting. At this location, it was founded by Thomas Holloway, an entrepreneur and businessman who made his fortune in patenting certain medicines and pills. He and his wife, Jane, had no children to leave their fortune to, so they decided to fund Royal Holloway College, which would be a college for women, one of the first of its kind in the U.K. In fact, it was only in 1965 that the college become co-ed and even then the number of male undergraduates only became sizable in the 1990s. Holloway contributed  £600,000 to the construction of the building and the establishment of the college in 1879. His wife had died 4 years earlier so the construction of the initial college building became a memorial to her. In one of the two quads there is a statue of the two of them.

The building was opened by Queen Victoria in 1886 and she gave it royal assent.  Ironically, Holloway too had died three years before that, so neither he nor his wife ever saw it.

Emerging from the woods to find the Founders Building

When Bob gave me a tour,he pointed out that one of the original requirements established by Holloway was that the Founder's Hall would always act as a student residence in its upper floor, and to this day that remains the case. They would have to get the U.K. Government to allow them to remove that lien, and so it goes. 

When I questioned him about the cost of maintenance of such a grand and ornate building,  Bob indicated that when the cost of maintenance became too onerous, they simply sold off a couple of paintings, by Gainsborough and Turner no less, from the Art Museum, which to this day still has a number of valuable paintings within it that Holloway contributed. The funds from the sale provide an annuity that now covers the maintenance costs. It also turns out that Holloway not only made money at medicine patents, but he also realized there was a market for prints of famous painting, so he bought a large number of them so that he could reserve the right to make prints of them given the newly developed printing processes in the mid to late 1800s. He then sold those prints to the new middle class that emerged in the Victorian age who were keen to have fine art in their homes, but who couldn't afford the originals.

My tour complete, we retired to a local pub that was originally set up by the university for its faculty and staff to drink at. Known as the Happy Man it certainly made me one after a pint and a delicious pub meal.  Thanks Bob!

Ale of the Day: Snowdonia Ale, Purple Moose Brewery, Gwynedd, North Wales