Of and for Cumbria: Our university at ten

Do you know which building on our Fusehill campus saw the birth of over 55,000 babies?

Did you know that our Ambleside campus can trace its educational origins back as far as 1892?

Do you know who Hugh Pollard is, and why we have a lecture theatre named after him in Lancaster?

Did you know that that our Brampton Road campus has some very significant Roman history?

Find the answers to these questions and learn more about the history of our fascinating campuses and legacy institutions in our brand new exhibition.

The University of Cumbria is celebrating its 10th anniversary this academic year, but we can trace the history of our institution and our campuses back a lot further than this. 

The occasion of our birthday has allowed us to celebrate our long history and showcase some of the fantastic photographs, video and objects in our special collections.

Each of our campuses is represented; London, Lancaster, Brampton Road, Fusehill Street and Ambleside. These are shown on colour coded timelines, all starting at different points in history.  We have broken up the lines with beautiful historic images from our legacy institutions; Cumbria Institute of the Arts, St Martin's College and Charlotte Mason College.

Object cases give a glimpse of just some of the university's special collections. Carlisle College of Art prospectuses from the 1930s, invitations to the official opening of St Martin's College Lancaster campus by Queen Elizabeth The Queen Mother and our very first hard backed prospectus from 2007 are all on show. Screens show looped video reels of the King's Own Regiment soldiers from Bowerham Barracks going to war, tales from Tower Hamlets and the student Conservation Society at Ambleside. 

Also showcased are some items on loan; student nature notebooks from Charlotte Mason College, dating from the early 1900s with kind permission from the Armitt museum. Roman pots and Carr's biscuit tins are on display, on loan from Tullie House, Carlisle.  These help to explain the history of our Brampton Road campus.

You can see all of these and many more now in the exhibition which is currently on display in Lancaster in our brand new Sentamu Teaching Block. The exhibition will be in Lancaster until early November when it will move to our Fusehill Street campus in Carlisle and then to Brampton Road for the new year before finally showing in Ambleside in the spring.

We would love you to contribute to the exhibition and we have set some questions to contemplate as you are walking through. What do our campuses mean to you? Can you put yourself into our timeline? How is the University of Cumbria a part of your story? At the end you will find a clip board with postcards for you to add in your memories.

You can watch a short video of the graphic designer, Steve Daniels from Big Torch being interviewed in the exhibition here.

Visit the exhibition on the ground floor of the Sentamu Teaching Block until November 5. Open Monday to Friday 9am to 5pm.  Access to the exhibition outside of these hours may be arranged to groups of alumni subject to availability of staff. Please contact Joanne Lusher alumni@cumbria.ac.uk to arrange.