Category: University Archive

We launched Explore Your Archive Week, in partnership with

Eltham Arts Winter Festival, with a tour of Avery Hill Mansion.

Our theme this year is ‘Portraits’, so for those of you not able to visit

Avery Hill here are the posters we have used:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Archive Exhibitions currently on display around campus.

 

125 years at the Mansion (Studio Corridor- AH-Mansion Site)

The North family and their new home 1891

• Avery Hill House before its conversion 1889-91

 

Avery Hill College time-line: Every decade 1900-2000

• The College horse-drawn omnibus in Eltham High Street 1911

 

Uni Life (AH-Mansion Library)

Student life and leisure from the 20th century

• An unidentified hall of residence; not Southwood, possibly Dartford

 

Southwood Centenary (AH-Grey Ground Floor)

Centenary of the completion of Southwood Halls

 

• Original LCC plans of the new halls of residence completed 1916

 

‘Three Cruisers’ (AH-Common Room vestibule)

Naval disaster, and the loss of our first student, James Atkins, in WWI

• Chatham Dockyard Historical Society WWI Centenary exhibition.

 

Polytechnic Magazine (Stockwell St. Library Basement)

First published 1916—Extracts from the war years.

• List of ‘The Fallen’ from Woolwich Polytechnic Magazine, Vol.1 No.1

 

A hundred years since the start of the Battle of the Somme on July 1st 1916 we remember those members of the University who lost their lives in action or from wounds during arguably the worst battle known to man.

Ralph Ernest ADAMS, Student of the Polytechnic Secondary School 1906-1910

Rifleman 1/5th Battalion, London Regiment (London Rifle Brigade)

Killed-in-Action on July 1st 1916, the first day of the Battle of the Somme.

The idea of a May Queen was re-introduced by John Ruskin and William Morris at Whitelands College for Women, now part of Roehampton University.

The first photographic evidence of its introduction at Avery Hill is from 1909.

Innocent mind and May Day in girl and boy, Most, O maid’s child thy choice and worthy the winning.

From Spring by Gerard Manley Hopkins

Lilly Evans 1909

Margaret Emler 1910

Notice the trains on the first two May Queens were made from curtains. Their length and richness suggests that they may have been the original curtains from the Drawing Room, Dining Room, Breakfast Room, or Boudoir of the Mansion.

Miss M. Twist 1911

Chrystabel Shorney 1912, with Maids of Honour

1985 saw a major step towards the present University of Greenwich when Thames Polytechnic ‘merged’ with Avery Hill Teacher Training College.

Avery Hill College was opened in 1906, as a non-denominational college for the training of women teachers, in the former mansion of the late Colonel J. T. North a.k.a. ‘The Nitrate King’. Eighty years later it was absorbed into the Polytechnic system, as were many other similar colleges at the time.

To give a taste of the College’s extensive archive in Avery Hill Library here are the covers from our sadly incomplete collection of the college prospectus.

1985-1986

1984-1985

1983-1984

1982-1983

1980-1981

1979-1980

1977-1978

1976-1977

1975-1976

1974-1975

1973-1974

1972-1973

1966-1967

1943-1944

(Note, College evacuated to Huddersfield, West Yorkshire)

1927-1928

 

To celebrate Shakespeare Week here are some photographs from the collection of plays performed in the Great Hall at Avery Hill. This is one of our richest collections in terms of images.

‘As You Like It’ (1954):

‘As You Like It’ (1907) from the album of Gwladys Burkett (1907-1909):

‘Romeo and Juliet’ (1950):

Our first post from the Thames Polytechnic Archives relates to its centenary celebrations in 1990. One of the ways in which this auspicious occasion was marked was to ask the College of Arms to create new armorial bearings.

 The main elements on the shield are taken from that of its predecessor Woolwich Polytechnic

with an engineers’ wheel ‘or’ for technical subjects, and a book ‘or’ for academic subjects on a ‘chief gules’. A cannon with lion’s head ‘erased or’ and ‘langued gules’ on a ‘pale sable’ represent the Royal Arsenal, from where students were initially drawn. The waves in ‘azure on argent’ represent the river Thames and come from the London County Council coat of arms.

Coincidentally three of these elements also appeared on the badge of Garnett College (Roehampton) which merged with Thames Polytechnic in 1987.

The final element, the capital of a Doric column ‘or’, represents Hammersmith College of Art and Building whose Departments of Architecture, Landscape Architecture and Surveying merged with Woolwich Polytechnic  in 1969.

The ‘dexter supporter’ is a white horse from the arms of Kent:

on a cedar tree representing Dartford College, which merged with Thames Polytechnic in in 1976.

The ‘sinister supporter’ is the lion of London on an oak tree from the arms of Quintin Hogg, one of our founders, whose portrait now hangs in QA063.

The crest wears a coronet of roses and shells from the badge of Avery Hill College which merged with the Polytechnic in 1985.

On top sits a red owl, for wisdom, a completely new element.

Our research so far has failed to find a Dartford College badge which supposedly has the cedar tree on it.

According to The University of Westminster Archives, Quintin Hogg their founder, did not have a Coat-of-Arms, and the oak tree appears to come from the cress of the arms of his grandson Quintin Hogg, Viscount Hailsham, the Conservative politician.

 

I’ve just accessioned this intriguing document which shows the e-resources the Library provided back in 1993. Mostly on CD-ROM. It also shows how widely spread the University still was at that time, which inspired the plans for expansion of the three main campuses shown in our previous post.

This document reports on the University’s presence in Kent, going back one hundred years to the founding of Dartford College which later became the campus for the School of Architecture. Most interestingly it reports on plans to build a new University campus at Dartford, which was part of a wider scheme to extend both the Avery Hill campus and Woolwich campus to provide additional facilities for the new University founded three years earlier. All these proposals, with drawings, are held in the University Archive.

If you’re not able to visit our two exhibitions in the Mansion at Avery Hill here are the images we’ve used.

Avery Hill Great Hall – ‘Picture Gallery’, from The British Architect, 1890.

Avery Hill  Great Hall – Ballroom, from 1891 photographs.

Avery Hill Great Hall – College Dining Room, 1906 ‘Greetings Card’.

Avery Hill Great Hall –  College Photograph, 1911.

Avery Hill Great Hall – Assembly Hall, 1950.

Avery Hill Great Hall – College Ball, 1951.

Avery Hill Great Hall – Library, 1970s.

Avery Hill Great Hall – Degree Ceremony, 1908s. 

Avery Hill Great Hall – Library, 1915.

Avery Hill Marble Hall – from 1891 photographs.

Avery Hill Marble Hall – The late Colonel North ‘lying-in-state’, 1896.

Avery Hill Marble Hall – Post card, with Great Hall as dining room beyond.

Avery Hill Marble Hall – Post card, with Great Hall as assembly hall behind.

Avery Hill Marble Hall – as ante-room to Great Hall as concert hall.