The University Campus, 1945–2000
The University of Manchester grew significantly in the post-war period. Post-war student numbers increased continuously, and it was the older civic universities like Manchester which initially accommodated this expansion.
- The 1945 Plan
- The Education Precinct
- The Student Village: Owens Park
- Discussion Points
- Additional Resources
The 1945 Plan
In 1945, Manchester city council issued The City of Manchester Plan, which set out a radical plan for the city’s reconstruction. The Plan envisaged dividing Manchester city centre into several special but integrated zones.
The University of Manchester was at the heart of Education Zone, situated between a Hospital Zone to the south and a Cultural Zone near the town hall. The Plan envisaged that new educational buildings would fill the area between the University and the College of Technology to the north.
As it turned out, financial stringencies curtailed these ambitions, and the University was faced with the more immediate problem of accommodating many extra students. The student population rose from around 3000 students in 1938 to over 6000 in 1950. This expansion was met by constructing temporary buildings or acquiring old buildings, such as the former Manchester High School for Girls in Dover Street. Buildings like the Lapworth chemistry laboratories (since demolished) were typical of these modest post-war buildings.
Although student numbers increased most in arts and social sciences, it was science which initially received buildings. The University wished to maintain its high reputation for scientific research, particularly in physics and the new field of computing. Between 1954 and 1969, the Science Area was developed on the eastern side of Oxford Road with new buildings for engineering, electrical engineering, chemistry, physics, biology and maths. These buildings were for the most part utilitarian and traditional in appearance, although the maths tower followed contemporary trends for high-rise buildings.
The Education Precinct
The Education Precinct project of the 1960s looked back to the 1945 plan — it was radical and arguably utopian in its ambitions. Its aim was not merely to add new buildings but to change the way the University campus functioned. The project aimed to physically unite the University campus with the rapidly expanding campus of the UMIST to the north.
The Precinct Centre, a complex of departments, residences and shops constructed in a forthright redbrick style, was to be its focal point. A system of high-level walkways was planned to radiate from the Centre, removing pedestrians from contact with the road below and extending to the new council housing in Hulme. In practice, these ambitions were only modestly realised, and very little evidence now survives of the walkways.
The Student Village: Owens Park
Another departure for the post-war campus was much-expanded student accommodation. Maintenance grants meant that students now had greater freedom to reside away from the parental home, which had been the norm up to 1939, and hence demand for term-time accommodation rose sharply.
In the late 1950s, the University took over the traditional halls of residence it did not already own. However, it recognised these could not accommodate many extra students. In addition, there was a feeling that students no longer wished for this more formal and old-fashioned type of residence. Many students lived in lodgings or ‘digs’, but these were not considered satisfactory for several reasons. In response, the University developed a new model of residence — the student ‘village’.
Owens Park in Fallowfield was the first student village in the UK. It comprised a series of small blocks of flats (plus the inevitable tower block) in landscaped surroundings. Students had good onsite facilities, without the paternalistic rules of the traditional hall. The architects hoped it would be “a setting wherein the students themselves may learn to govern their affairs in democratic ways.”
There were few physical changes to the campus after 1970, as finances tightened, and student numbers stabilised. The last major project of this period was the huge Stopford medical school, opened in 1973. In the early 21st century, the cycle of new building began again after The University of Manchester was created in 2004. Ironically, this process saw the demolition of some buildings — the Maths Tower and the Moberly Tower - which had once epitomised post-war modernity.
Discussion Points
What were the characteristics of a ‘redbrick’ university, like Manchester, in the post-war period? How did it differ from the new universities of the 1960s?
What did the University see as its main challenges in this period, and how realistic were its plans for the campus?
Is there a coherent architectural vision in the University’s post-war campus planning?
Additional Resources
Rowland Nicholas, City of Manchester Plan (1945)
Brian Pullan and Michele Abendstern, A history of the University of Manchester, 1951–1973 (Manchester 2000).
William Whyte, Redbrick: a social and architectural history of Britain’s civic universities (Oxford 2015)
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