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Royal Holloway, University of London (RHUL) is a constituent college of the University of London. The college has three faculties, 18 academic departments, and about 8,000 undergraduate and postgraduate students from over 130 different countries. The campus is located slightly west of Egham, Surrey, within the boundary of the Greater London Urban Area, although outside of the M25 motorway and some 20 miles (32 km) from the geographic centre of London.
The Egham campus was founded in 1879 by the Victorian entrepreneur and philanthropist Thomas Holloway. Royal Holloway College was a women-only institution, and was officially opened in 1886 by Queen Victoria. Royal Holloway College became a member of the University of London in 1900. In 1945, the college began admitting male postgraduate students, and in 1965, male undergraduates. In 1985, Royal Holloway College merged with Bedford College (another formerly all-women's college in London which was founded in 1849 and, like Royal Holloway College, joined the University of London in 1900 and became fully co-educational in 1965). The merged college was named Royal Holloway and Bedford New College (RHBNC), this remaining the official registered name of the college by Act of Parliament. The campus is dominated by the Founder's Building, a Grade I listed red-brick building which is modelled on the Château de Chambord in the Loire Valley in France.
Royal Holloway College
Royal Holloway College, a women-only college, was founded by the Victorian entrepreneur Thomas Holloway in 1879 on the Mount Lee Estate in Egham. The founding of the college was brought about after Holloway, seeking to fulfil a philanthropic gesture, began a public debate through The Builder regarding 'How best to spend a quarter of a million or more', at which point his wife proposed to build a college especially for women. Holloway later increased his original sum of money to half a million, and today, the campus is still best known for its original 600-bed building, known as the Founder's Building, designed by William Henry Crossland and inspired by the Château de Chambord in the Loire Valley, France.Sir Nikolaus Pevsner called the original college building "the most ebullient Victorian building in the Home Counties", and noted that together with its sister building the Holloway Sanatorium, it represents "the summit of High Victorian design". The Founder's Building, which is now Grade I listed, was officially opened in 1886 by Queen Victoria, who allowed the use of "Royal" in the college's name. Founder's has been described by The Times as "one of Britain’s most remarkable university buildings", largely due to its elaborate architecture, and according to The Sunday Times it "makes the college instantly recognisable". The college also has a Chapel, completed in 1886 as one of the last parts of the university to be finished. October 1887 saw the arrival of the first 28 students at Royal Holloway College. It later became a constituent of the University of London in 1900, as did Bedford College with which Royal Holloway College would eventually merge.
Merger of Royal Holloway College and Bedford College (1985)
Bedford College was founded by Elizabeth Jesser Reid in 1849 as a higher education college for the education of women. Reid leased a house at 47 Bedford Square in the Bloomsbury area of London, and opened the Ladies College in Bedford Square. The intention was to provide a liberal and non-sectarian education for women, something no other institution in the United Kingdom provided at the time. The college moved to 8 and 9 York Place (off Baker Street) in 1874, and the to Regent's Park in 1908. In 1900, the college became a constituent school of the University of London. Like Royal Holloway College, following its membership of the University of London, in 1965, it allowed male undergraduates to study on its premises for the first time.
Royal Holloway College and Bedford College merged in 1985. The pressure for the merger was due to a lack of government funding for higher education, and the college was named Royal Holloway and Bedford New College (RHBNC), with an inauguration being held at the College Chapel in 1986 by Elizabeth II. The newest title remains the official registered name of the college, though this was changed for day-to-day use to "Royal Holloway, University of London" by the College Council in 1992.
Since the merger with Bedford College, Royal Holloway has entered into collaborative discussions with Brunel University and St George's, University of London. The latter project was cancelled in September 2009. Royal Holloway, St George's and Kingston University continue to work together in the field of health and social care teaching and research.
Collaboration
Royal Holloway has forged successful academic links with other universities in the Greater London area and beyond. In 2004 RHUL became a member of the WestFocus Knowledge Exchange based at Kingston University along with Brunel, Roehampton, Thames Valley Universities, University of Westminster and St George's, University of London. The WestFocus initiative was created to forge business and enterprise links between its member institutions and small to medium-size business partners in the South East of England. Royal Holloway's Department of Physics is a founding member of SEPnet, the South East Physics Network, which supports collaboration between seven universities in the South East of England on physics research, outreach and postgraduate teaching. The John Adams Institute for Accelerator Research (J.A.I.) is a major collaboration in the field of particle physics between Royal Holloway and the University of Oxford. In the field of health and social care research, the SWan (South West London academic network) between Royal Holloway, St George's and Kingston University based at St George's in Tooting is another of Royal Holloway's major collaborative projects.
Campus
Royal Holloway's campus in Egham is set in 135 acres of woodland, between Windsor and Heathrow. Around 200 species of shrubs, 150 different types of tree and numerous wild flowering plants can be found in Royal Holloway's parkland. The campus is 35 minutes from Waterloo station in central London which is 19 miles away, and Windsor is 5 miles. The campus is 2 miles from M25 junction 13 and close to the M3, M4 and M40 and London Heathrow Airport. While Royal Holloway's worst feature is considered to be that "Egham is not known for its social scene",[7] it has been noted that the campus's environment "offers the best of both worlds – friendly and relaxed on the one hand, dynamic and busy on the other." The former principal, Professor Stephen Hill, also commended its "superb campus environment and the close-knit nature of our community". The Independent stated that the university is "Renowned for its friendly and supportive environment".
The Founder's Building, which dominates the campus, has striking north and south towers, two large quadrangles and contains a chapel, kitchen and dining hall, lecture theatre and the arts library along with student rooms and offices. The building has often been the centre of media attention and has become a popular filming location for TV and film as a grandiose 'university' or 'public school'. Apart from the ITV's 'Trinity', the 2006 film Basic Instinct 2: Risk Addiction starring Sharon Stone was partly filmed at the South Quad of the Founder's Building during the summer of 2005, becoming the only location to be used outside London. Some areas of the building were also made to look like a psychiatric institute for the film. Similarly, the Academy Award-winning movie Howards End had some scenes shot inside one of the Founder's courtyards with the statue of Queen Victoria visible. The BBC's Antiques Roadshow has used the North Quad of the Founder's Building as a location for one of its antique filming days, and in 2002, external scenes for an episode of Midsomer Murders, ("Murder on St. Malley's Day"), featuring a fictional public school sports day were partly shot inside the South Quad of the Founder's building. The character Sophie Neveu in the best-selling book The Da Vinci Code by Dan Brown is mentioned as having studied cryptography at the Information Security Group at Royal Holloway. Royal Holloway's Information Security Group is amongst the biggest academic security groups in the world, and in 1998, it was awarded the Queen's Anniversary Prize in recognition of its work. In the autumn of 2009, the Founder's Building provided the external settings for the ITV2 satirical drama, Trinity.
Halls of residence
Most halls are around the main campus, are initially allocated to the first year to students who firmly accept a conditional or unconditional offer. Accommodation prices at the university can vary, ranging from £65-£125 per week. Catered-pay-as-you-go accommodation is also available. Currently 2,900 students live in halls of residence.
The Founder's Building houses 479 students in original Victorian rooms and converted space. Meals for catered students are provided in the impressive dining hall. Also on campus, Gowar and Wedderburn, a construction of 564 study bedrooms in two new blocks opened in September 2004. These halls will also be used as accommodation for rowers at the 2012 Olympic Games. Similar accommodation blocks, named Butler, Tuke and Williamson, were completed in September 2007 to replace the ageing Athlone, Cameron and Williamson Halls. Of the waste created by the demolition of Athlone, Cameron and Williamson, 98 per cent was recycled. All five of these new halls were named after former principals and have been designed to be environmentally friendly, accomplished by sedum-planted roofs that change colour by season, as well as being designed to improve insulation. In an assessment used to distinguish the environmental performance of buildings, BREEMAN rated the Butler, Tuke and Williamson halls as "very good", as their construction was designed to reduce heat loss. The Kingswood I and II accommodation is 1-mile away. These halls hold over 400 students, and a free bus service operates to the campus. Other accommodation includes Highfield Court (125 students), Penrose Court (200 students), Reid Hall (287 students), Runnymede Hall (441 students) which was opened by HRH The Princess Royal in 1992[10] and Victorian Houses (25 postgraduate students).
Campus redevelopment
International Building
Between 2002 to 2008, the college underwent a £100 million investment programme and a re-development of its campus, as a result of the merge with Bedford College and the sale of Bedford's site in Regent's Park. A number of recent projects undertaken by Royal Holloway have included an extension to the School of Management, the library (which holds half a million books), and the academic staff, as well as an improvement to student services. The biological science laboratories have also been renovated and the Windsor Building has been used to create seminar rooms and a 400-seat auditorium. As an extension to the drama department, the on-site Victorian boilerhouse has been converted into a performance space. The International Building, opened in 2000 by HRH The Princess Royal,[10] houses the Language Centre along with the English, European Studies, French, German, Italian and Hispanic Studies Departments. The new developments have also been followed by the establishment of formal links with New York University, the University of Sydney, and Yale University,[11] and connections with the Royal College of Music means that music students at Royal Holloway have the opportunity to take lessons there.
The size of the campus has allowed the college to develop some of the best sports facilities of any university institution in the London area, and helped build the college's reputation as a sporting institutions of excellence. An aerobics studio, fitness suite, sports Hall, sports fields and tennis courts account for some of the sporting facilities that Royal Holloway offers. Situated on the campus are restaurants, college shops, a bank, a health centre, a Chapel, a careers centre, as well as a new sports complex. As a result of an evaluation by People & Planet in 2007, Royal Holloway was ranked a disappointing 60th out of 120 universities for environmental performance. The university has put into place initiatives to enhance environmental performance, such as the improvement of woodland management to develop nature conservation and more recycling banks are being introduced to halls of residence.
The Picture Gallery and Holloway Collection
Royal Holloway's famous Picture Gallery is in Founder's Building. From 1881–3, Thomas Holloway paid the equivalent of £6m for 77 Victorian era paintings. Most of the collection was acquired from Christie's sales' catalogues, except for five, and it is thought that Holloway was only ever outbid once. The Royal Holloway Collection toured the United States from 2008-2011, its debut exhibition overseas. The paintings were displayed at the Philbrook Museum of Art, Tulsa, Oklahoma, the Delaware Art Museum and other museums.[69] In order to fund the maintenance of Founder's, 3 paintings were sold for £21 million between 1993 and 1995, and the remaining paintings at Royal Holloway have a current value of £16.6 million. The Picture Gallery is a resource for the Victorian Studies Centre for teaching and research in Victorian art, architecture and literature, including a taught MA under the Department of English. A major refurbishment of the gallery was completed in 2008. The Holloway collection returned to the college in 2011.
Students' Union
With little nearby off-campus activity, there is a great emphasis placed on The Royal Holloway Students' Union (SURHUL), which supposedly "has a reputation as one of the best unions in the London area", in words of The Independent. The Students' Union provides much of the on-campus 'entertainment', organising and sponsoring the sport clubs and special-interest societies, on top of providing welfare advice to students through the Student Advice Centre.
The Royal Holloway Students' Union is responsible for the student and community radio station Insanity Radio, which was established in 1998. Available locally on 1287kHz, Insanity broadcasts 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, with live presenters in the studio from 8AM till 2AM daily in term time and some holiday periods.[71] The station is also available worldwide through the internet. Receiving a positive reaction, the station has twice won the Silver Award for Best Student Radio Station at BBC Radio 1's Student Radio Awards, and has also won the Best Marketing and Promotions Award 3 times since 1999, along with other awards. The station was awarded a community radio station license in early 2010, and as of February 2012 is in the process of testing FM broadcasts in 103.2MHz.
The Orbital is the RHUL campus magazine and is published by the Students' Union, covering subjects from higher education news, opinion and reviews. The original official Royal Holloway student publication was in the format of a newspaper called The Egham Sun, but this was replaced with the magazine edition in the early 1990s. The magazine is regularly published in print and online.
The Founder is the independent student newspaper. Founded in 2006, 4,000 free copies are printed and distributed on a fortnightly basis to numerous spots on campus and in the local area. The newspaper receives no financial support from the college or SURHUL and thus advertising revenue acquired by the students on the editorial board pays for the printing costs of the paper. This means that editorial and financial responsibility is entirely that of students. In December 2010 the newspaper became the first student publication in the UK to launch an iPhone app.
At the 2007 Guardian Student Media Awards, Christian Anthony was shortlisted for the Student critic of the year Award. At the inaugural 2011 London Student Journalism Awards Kate Brook, the newspaper's Features Editor, was recognised with the Best Feature Writer award.