A site of education since 1964 when St Martin’s College moved into the former barracks of the King’s Own Royal Regiment. 2024 marks six decades of our Lancaster campus.
To help celebrate our milestone anniversary here are 10 interesting facts about the Lancaster campus... How many did you know?
1. Dr Hugh Pollard, the first Principal, named the college after Saint Martin of Tours, a Roman centurion who converted to become a French Christian bishop, connecting the site’s military past with its new purpose as a teaching college, established by the Church of England. The college was originally known as S. Martin’s College, written in the French way.
2. The iconic swathe of daffodils on the lawn are known a ‘The Marie Curie Field of Hope’, and were planted in memory of students, staff and friends who have suffered with cancer.
3. The land was originally purchased by the War Office in 1873 following the Crimean War for only £7,300 intended as the new barracks for the King’s Own Royal Regiment.
4. The curtain behind the altar in the chapel holds a large secret... A huge painting by acclaimed British ‘kitchen sink’ artist, John Bratby. The controversial work of art is said to be a self-portrait of Bratby in the Christ role, with various friends and relatives appearing as onlookers at the crucifixion.
5. Two small gravestones on the campus mark the resting place of canine military mascots. One is engraved: ‘In memory of Bob, the Guard Room dog, 1902 – 1912’ and the other: ‘Nab de Cordiva, 1945 – 1959’. Both Bob and Nab must have been well loved pooches in the Bowerham Barracks days. You can see these on the lawn in front of College Main.
6. Below the altar in the chapel you can see a clear tile embedded into the floor. Underneath are stones from the cave in Tours, where St Martin had lived. They were brought to Lancaster by a French priest.
7. On the ground floor of the Harold Bridges library, there is a sculpture by Barbara Hepworth – a maquette for her Winged Figure of 1962 on the John Lewis store, Oxford Street, London. The piece was bought By Dr Hugh Pollard for the reduced price of £3,000. At first the sculpture was mounted outdoors, but it had strings which perished in the weather and had to be re-strung.
8. The Hugh Pollard Lecture Theatre, built in 1993, was designed as an irregular polygon, and acoustician Colin Frier intended it to be a room in which microphones were unnecessary.
9. Playwright Alan Bennett, who knew Dr Hugh Pollard from their Oxford days, visited St Martin’s College in 1993, to formally open the Hugh Pollard Lecture Theatre. On Dr Pollard’s death in 1985, Alan Bennett wrote a fond obituary, printed in the Guardian.
10. First Principal Hugh Pollard lived on campus in a specially designed upside-down Swedish style house with bedroom downstairs and kitchen upstairs. Dr Pollard would invite students to his home to get to know them and discuss their studies, an ‘at home with’ invitation would appear in student’s pigeonholes.
Do you have a fascinating fact or memory of the Lancaster campus? Share yours here...