The School of Management was opened in 2021 and housed in a building called the Moore Extension. The extension has now become the Moore Building and the old Moore Laboratory is now the Moore Annexe.
Buildings: Post 1984
This category is to show all the building work that has taken place since we all left the College. The map shows the campus as it was in 2021.
The colour-coding of the buildings shows the primary use of each - blue for halls of residence, yellow for academic and pink for social. To the north of the A30 the amount of academic space has not changed dramatically since we were students but the growth in accommodation has been quite staggering to cater with the change from 1,000 students to 10,000 students. There has also been significant growth in halls in the old Athlone / Cameron area.
In the section below the academic buildings are covered first, then the Social buildings with halls of residence last. These days it is probably easier to think of the Campus as covering both sides of the road with the A30 through the middle of it!
I am also considering creating a subsection of this category to show all the buildings that have been demolished to create some of the space for these new buildings. I have actually found doing all this quite a depressing activity as I realise just how much of the splendour of the campus has been lost. There is inevitably more development to come but I think some of that will be down towards Nobles Field and on the opposite side of the railway track down there.
If you look carefully you will see a small magnifying glass in the bottom right corner that will provide a larger picture of the map or, if you want a ridiculously large PDF version you can click here to download it.
Another huge building located just beyond the Boilerhouse. The home of the foreign language departments.
The Wolfson Building totally obscures the frontage of the old chemistry block put up in the 70s - the Bourne Laboratory.
I can find no way to get a picture of the Munro Fox extensions to the Bourne Building. The extension seems to consist of two distinct parts, one labelled Munro Fox Lecture Theatre and the second labeled Munro Fox Lab and Seminar rooms.
The Bedford Library opened in 1993 as a science library. Work had started at the time of the Bedford merger in 1984 but there were several delays before it was ready to be bought into service. It can be tricky to find between the Bourne building and McCrea building.
The John Bowyer building is another one that has been built on Williamson field. With some of the buildings you can think that someone was after a design award but it's not a thought that comes immediately to mind with this one! It appears to be quite functional. It sits adjacent to the Queen's Building.
The Handa Noh Theatre was opened in 1992 as part of the department for Drama and Theatre studies. It sits down towards The Piggery Gate. Apparently the Handa Noh stage is the only permanently standing Noh stage outside of Japan.
This new building was opened in 2017 and for many of us it had committed the cardinal sin of having been the reason the old Student Union building had been demolished. Against my initial feelings I actually quite like it. It sits the opposite side of Founders Square and perversely seems to complement Founders by being so completely different.
The Windsor Building is located where Lecture Rooms A & B used to be located. The loss of the two rooms is not a great one but the trees and shrubbery that used to surround them will be sorely missed. The building was completed in 2006 and provides a modern teaching building with a surprising amount of space inside.
The Beatrice Shilling building (named after the pioneering aeronautical engineer and motor racer) is the new home for the department of Electronic Engineering and was opened in 2018. It sits on the old Williamson field immediately in front of the new Williamson hall of residence.
The Derbyshire building is located on the corner where the footpath from the halls of residence to Founders start (opposite Williamson). This is a new building (about 2019) which houses an Electron Microscope. Another building to add to those I need to get a picture of next time I visit campus!
The new Sports Centre was completed in 1999 and has a range of facilities covering all aspects of sports and fitness for health. It is built on Nobles field which was bought by the College in 1965. The original sports hall was built in 1968 to replace a gymnasium which had been in the basement below the Founders Library. The field had been prone to flooding until a new drainage system was installed in the 70s.
The Packhorse is the pub on Egham Hill just about opposite the Piggery Gate into the campus. In the 70s it was very much a 'locals' pub and students were never particularly welcome. It has now been acquired by the College (one of the few buildings on that side of the A30 that the college didn't already own) and is run by the Students Union.
Alas, with the influx of additional students after the merger with Bedford College the old SU Building aka Crosslands Bungalow was no longer sufficient to meet the social needs of the student. The new Students Union Building was built further away from Founders and beyond the old Horton Building and completed in 1987.
Reid Hall was the first of the accommodation buildings to be put up after the Bedford merger. They were completed in 1986 and provided a total of 188 study bedrooms over three 3-story blocks. They were built on land near Athlone, Cameron and Williamson.
Gowar and Wedderburn Halls were opened in 2005. These were built to a much higher standard that Reid Halls. Each room had a double bed (though single occupation rooms) as well as an en-suite shower room and toilet. Gowar has 215 student bedrooms and Wedderburn 352. The buildings housed athletes for the London 2012 Olympics and alumni who attended the 2010 RHC70s reunion.
Runnymede Hall comprises of eight buildings and was built over two phases. Phase 1 with 4 buildings offering a total of 252 study-bedrooms arranged in groups of six was opened in 1992. The second phase with a further 4 buildings providing 211 en-suite study bedrooms and double bedrooms for married students opened in 1996.
After the demolition of the bulk of Athlone & Cameron Halls (the old dining halls and common rooms, as well as some of the bedrooms above these in Athlone remain) Butler and Tuke Halls were put up to replace them.
The Williamson Hall, first opened in 1973, was also demolished and replaced with a new Williamson Hall.
The George Eliot Halls are not so much a hall of residence but a complete student Estate. Built on the north side of the A30 in the grounds of Elm Lodge and The Chestnuts. The estate is made up of about 15 buildings. Each building is a modern townhouse and they offer more space for relaxing and socialising than other halls, including a lounge area and a kitchen.