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‘Little Balliol’Growth and Development, 1893–1927

Despite trials and tribulations in its early years, the University College of North Wales had created a secure foundation. Around the turn of the century, more of its founding fathers – the first professors – began to move on. Gray, who became a Fellow of the Royal Society (FRS) in 1896, moved to Glasgow three years later to succeed his mentor, Lord Kelvin. Dobbie left in 1903 and was elected FRS the following year; he was knighted in 1915 for his service as Principal of the Government Laboratories. Ballard Mathews left for Cambridge in 1896, and he too became a Fellow of the Royal Society; he later returned to Bangor as an Acting Professor. W. Rhys Roberts, an outstanding scholar, moved to the Chair of Classics at Leeds in 1904.

Their successors were of similarly high calibre, and were unswervingly loyal to the Bangor cause. In Physics, one of Gray’s own students, Edward Taylor Jones, a native of Denbigh, succeeded him in the Chair. Jones was to serve for 26 years before he then succeeded Gray again at Glasgow. Kennedy Orton, a St Leonards man who originally studied Medicine at Cambridge before turning to Chemistry and gaining a highly-acclaimed Ph.D. from Heidelberg, was to hold the Chair of Chemistry for 27 years. Orton had wide interests, his enthusiasms including music, rocks and birds. P. J. White was appointed to a new Chair in Zoology in 1895, and was in post for 34 years, developing an interest in marine science and at one time attempting to fund a Puffin Island biological station which had been acquired. R. W. Phillips, a product of Coleg Normal and Cambridge became Professor of Botany and occupied the Chair for 29 years. He was a leading scientist who contributed the article on ‘Algae’ in the eleventh edition of The Encyclopaedia Britannica. Thomas Winter, a Yorkshireman, became the first Professor of Agriculture in 1895, remaining in post for 18 years, and under him the department became regarded virtually as ‘the agricultural headquarters of north Wales’.¹

Thomas Hudson-Williams, born in Caernarfon and educated at Friars School, Bangor, had lectured in French and German before he took up the Chair of Greek in 1904 – a position he held until his retirement in 1940. Osbert Fynes-Clinton became Professor of French in 1904 (modern languages being divided to create departments of French and Romance Languages, and German and Teutonic Philology), holding the Chair until his retirement in 1937. A brilliant linguist, Fynes-Clinton studied the Arfon dialect of Welsh in his spare time and published a book on the subject in 1913.

One of the most versatile scholars was John Lloyd Williams of Llanrwst, who had been educated at Coleg Normal and became an Assistant Lecturer in Botany in 1897. But he also wrote operettas, and was a much sought-after conductor of choirs and musical adjudicator. His keenest interest was in Welsh folk-songs, and he played a leading role in developing music in Bangor. He moved to Aberystwyth as Professor of Botany in the First World War, and during his career received both a D.Sc. for his work on marine algae and an honorary D.Mus.

W. Lewis Jones replaced Reichel as Head of English Language and Literature. Another former Friars School pupil, he had worked as a journalist and contributed regularly to the Manchester Guardian after his appointment at Bangor. In 1899, Reichel also gave up the Chair of History, and John Edward Lloyd, the Registrar, became Professor of History for the next 31 years. Lloyd also continued as Registrar until 1920, and in later life would lampoon his role as that of ‘lecturer in the morning, registrar in the afternoon and researcher in the evening’.² For a time he also served as Honorary Librarian (Thomas Shankland was Assistant Librarian). Born in Liverpool, but with family roots in Montgomeryshire, his A History of Wales from the Earliest Times to the Edwardian Conquest (2 vols, 1911) is regarded as a seminal work. He was elected a Fellow of the British Academy in 1930 and was knighted in 1934. Dignified, refined, always correct and formal – he was not one with whom people dared to be too familiar³ – Lloyd was a truly renowned academic who must rank close to Reichel as one of the leaders responsible for the survival and development of the University College of North Wales.

At the age of 30, John Morris-Jones was elevated to a Chair in Welsh in 1894, the Council paying heed to the welcome growth in the numbers studying Welsh. He was one of Bangor’s academic leaders with genuine star quality. A native of Anglesey, who had graduated in mathematics from Oxford but had read Celtic books and manuscripts at the Bodleian Library, he was to become a poet as well as a major scholar and teacher at Bangor. His translations of 38 poems by Heine had considerable influence, though it was as a scholar of the Welsh language, and particularly Welsh grammar, that he is principally known. His major work, A Welsh Grammar, Historical and Comparative, appeared in 1911. In his early years in Bangor, he lectured through the medium of English, and his first lecture in 1889 attracted six College officers, two students and two strangers.⁴ In some respects he seemed a disappointed man. Yet he was arguably the most inspiring Welsh scholar of his generation and was knighted (and acquired a hyphenated surname) in 1918.

The Chair of Pure and Applied Mathematics was filled for 30 years from 1896 by one of the most extraordinary academics to have served the University at Bangor: George Hartley Bryan. A formidable mathematician, with a touch of genius, he was to make a striking contribution to modern-day knowledge of aircraft stability and aeroplane design. Bryan had analysed the theory of flight in an article in 1897, and in 1901 he lectured to the Royal Institution on the history and progress of aerial locomotion – a lecture which rather irked the great Alexander Graham Bell, then still basking in glory as the inventor of the telephone. When he heard of Bryan’s lecture, Bell complained from Washington that he would now have to give up his own idea for a lecture on a similar subject.⁵ Working with W. E. Williams, the son of a Penrhyn quarryman and a Bangor graduate in physics and mathematics in 1901, Bryan published the first results of experiments on the stability of gliders. Essentially what Bryan did was to apply the principles of mathematics to the question of aircraft stability. His book Stability in Aviation appeared in 1911 and led to the award of the second gold medal of the Royal Aeronautical Society, the first having gone to the Wright Brothers. The Fellowship of the Royal Society and other accolades followed.

Yet Bryan was also resolutely eccentric. His presence in the College was inclined to cause turbulence, and Reichel was said to have come to regard his appointment as a mistake. Bryan advocated the study of photography, railed against rules and regulations and argued that professors should not have to set and mark examination papers. It was said that on one occasion Bryan refused to attend a Senate meeting, but sat on the steps outside writing rude notes which a porter was instructed to take in.⁶ The Council eventually received his resignation with equanimity in 1925.

W. E. Williams, however, went on to play a pioneering role in the University College. By 1910 he was contemplating building an aircraft, with financial support from H. R. Davies of Treborth, and a flight to collect scientific data was reported on in 1913.⁷ Williams later became Head of an independent Department of Applied Electricity, and in 1942/3 became the first Professor of Electronic Engineering.

The University College’s growth and development from the 1890s owed much to the intrinsic quality and dedication of its long-serving leading academics. But new plans were also hatched. The College opened a teacher-training department (the ‘Day Training Department’, as it was known) in 1894 to educate elementary school teachers. It was a conspicuous success, and the lecturer in charge, J. A. Green, became a professor in 1896. When he left for Sheffield in 1904, Green was replaced by R. L. Archer as Professor of Education. Archer, who built up the Education Department over the next 36 years, was one of the great characters in Bangor in the first third of the twentieth century. A father-figure to many (he was even known as ‘Daddy Archer’), tales associated with his main passions – rugby and cats – abounded.⁸

Building on good work in agriculture, the College again blazed a trail in 1904 by establishing a Forestry Department, with the aid of a government grant. In agricultural education, it was believed that Bangor had ‘set the fashion for the whole kingdom’.⁹ Theology had specifically not been part of the academic programme originally, but the proximity of theological colleges and the recognition given them in the University of Wales charter led to the introduction of a Department of Semitic Languages in 1898.

A deep sense of indebtedness to the local community remained, and from its earliest days the University College had offered ‘extension courses’. Much later, in 1910, a more systematic approach was adopted with the introduction of a ‘tutorial class’ at Blaenau Ffestiniog – the first such class in Wales. This ‘extra-mural’ activity was particularly associated with James Gibson, Professor of Philosophy, and later with R. Silyn Roberts, a former quarryman, Methodist minister and poet.¹⁰

By the turn of the century, the University College of North Wales was feeling buoyant, a national newspaper noting that it had grown with ‘unflagging vigour’.¹¹ Student numbers had risen to 277 by 1900/1, and the Penrhyn Arms was no longer a suitable home. Five years previously the College Council had discussed with the Penrhyn estate the addition of some temporary buildings, but they were also considering the creation of a permanent university building. The issue was not unproblematic, and caused some heated debate: some on both the Court and the Council were not above calling for a complete relocation of the College. However, when the cooperation of the City Council was sought, it was forthcoming. In March 1902, the Corporation presented as a gift to the College a ten-acre site including the Penrallt land and part of ‘Bishop’s Park’. The College purchased a further five acres, and the location for a permanent University College building had at last materialized.¹²

An appeal for funds was again set in train. Rathbone, who relinquished the presidency in 1900 (and was succeeded by Lord Kenyon of Gredington), donated £1,000 to the building fund, setting an irresistible example which others followed. Between 1900 and 1910 a sum not far short of £100,000 was collected from friends, old students and local people. There were several villages around Bangor in which a donation from every household was made. In Llanuwchllyn in Meirionnydd, which contained 163 houses, 186 people gave money.¹³ There were other major supporters too. The Worshipful Company of Drapers give £15,000 to erect a library block, while the Duke of Westminster, the Marquis of Anglesey and businessman Owen Owen of Liverpool were among contributors. A significant development early in 1906 was the award of a grant of £20,000 from the Chancellor of the Exchequer.¹⁴

Henry T. Hare, designer of Westminster College, Cambridge among other buildings, was already a celebrated architect when he was selected in 1906 to create the new College building. He has rightly been lauded for his design. The building was to house the arts and administrative departments, the library, museum and a large central hall; there was room too for the physics, chemistry and other science departments at a later date. Interestingly, however, the central idea of adapting the building to the slope of the land, and creating a second smaller quadrangle, was not actually Hare’s but that of Isambard Owen, then Vice-President of the College. But Hare enthusiastically revised his plans to take up the suggestion.¹⁵ Hare’s architectural style has defied some analysis. At an early stage, he appeared to be working in a late Jacobean style; he subsequently described it as ‘late renaissance’. Some commentators have discerned Gothic characteristics, while others described it as ‘Jacobethan’. What is clear is that Hare wished to associate the building in style with Oxbridge university buildings, but with due homage to Wales and Welsh history. There are seven statues on the exterior of the building – including those of St David and Owain Glyndŵr – and the arms of the Drapers’ Company adorn the library wall. Hare gave the University College a building of which to be proud, at once dignified and noble, a ‘majestical fabric’ in the words of W. Lewis Jones, the Professor of English.¹⁶ The head of an English University was reported to consider the building ‘too good for mortal man’,¹⁷ while many more came to regard it as ‘a lasting monument to the interest which the working men and women of Wales took in education’.¹⁸

The foundation stone of the new building was laid by King Edward VII on 9 July 1907 at an impressive ceremony during which a knighthood was conferred on Harry Reichel. In 1909, largely as a result of Lloyd George’s persuasions, Sir John Prichard-Jones, an Anglesey man who had risen in the business world to become managing director of Dickens and Jones, offered to bear the cost of building the great hall. This was ‘munificent liberality’ in Lloyd George’s view, and the University College Council warmly thanked both Lloyd George and Prichard-Jones.¹⁹ In July 1911, a further royal visit saw King George V officially open the new building. In the end, there was insufficient funding to complete the main quadrangle, and the science departments remained in the old home for another 15 years.