Ian Saunders graduated from Lancaster in 1969. He became the Principal of Bowland College in 1989.
In the Beginning … was the word. And the word was “Universities”. And the Privy Council spake, saying “Let there be Lancaster”. And there was Lancaster. And there was Bowland College (but not within 6 days, not all at once).
In 1964 the first 200 (or so) Lancaster undergraduates arrived to discover their University was a hurriedly converted furniture factory in St Leonard Gate near the city centre, opposite the Grand Theatre. I came in 1965, when these pioneers had become sophisticated second year students, who lorded it over mere freshers. We found we had joined not only Lancaster University, but also something mysteriously called Bowland College (or Lonsdale College, for those by an unlucky chance in the other half of the student body). Although from the start there were two College Syndicates to organise welfare and engage in planning the buildings at Bailrigg, for several years these Colleges were only unsubstantial names. But somehow they were names that mattered, and Bowlanders were different and stuck together while mingling with Lonsdale folk. However, there were so few students in total that everybody knew everybody else and endlessly gossiped about what they were up to, which was not much by modern standards. There were not the opportunities.
All students were put in “approved lodgings”, supervised by grim puritanical landladies, mainly in seaside holiday accommodation near the Battery in Morecambe, normally vacant from October to June. University approval meant you were given a desk to work at, a hot milky drink at night, and various other things considered necessary for students. From the place allocated in my own case, it is clear that plumbing was not listed among these necessities. The toilet was two floors below my garret room and the only hot water supply was in a jug delivered to my door at 7 a.m. You could book a bath by giving 2 days notice. Heating was minimal during the day and absent overnight, so that on some mornings the cold water jug had frozen over. In particular, I disliked the plastic flowers covered in dust that were everywhere in the house, even round the toilet cistern. I moved to a better place after Christmas. Experiences like that are formative. Students today are soft!
The days were spent in Lancaster. We went shopping between lectures. The biggest classes were held in a disused church, rented by the University, which later became a Centre for the Deaf, instead of the merely inattentive. The building is now the “Friary” student pub. In 1965 Lancaster was full of small shabby pubs. In most of them students were eyed furtively and made to feel unwelcome. “Don’t sit there, love, that’s Charlie’s seat.” (And he might want it in an hour or two.) A few of these pubs are still there, almost unchanged today, and can be found by adventurous city explorers. The nearest pub to the University was the Shakespeare (now a B&B), which became a popular student hang-out, and the Tramway Hotel, even more dingy, was in St Leonard Gate on the other side. Just down the road from that was a great Fish and Chip shop, where in the back room you could get a good sit-down meal. I had my first chip butty there and I can still remember the thick butter melting all over the fresh hot chips! There was also an Oxfam shop somewhere in St Leonard Gate, where I bought a 10 volume Victorian encyclopedia for 50p. It was a bargain, but remember that 50p then was roughly the cost of fish, chips, peas, buttered bread and a pot of tea for two people in the chippy, or about 5 pints of beer in the Shakespeare! Of course our income was low too, the annual student grant being about £500.
All the University activities began to transfer from the city to the campus in 1966 and 1967, though well into the 1970’s many new departments were first housed down in St Leonard Gate, while their accommodation on campus was being built. The original bits opened up at Bailrigg were University House, Alex Square (with a bank and a few shops), stage 1 of the Library, Bowland College, and the Physics Department. A good sense of priorities shown there! At first students shared the rooms on campus to work in (about 5 or 6 to a room). These studies were later converted into bedrooms once there were enough working spaces in the library.
From October 1967 (I think) some students got their own study bedrooms in college, but I cannot remember when that became the norm for freshers.
I do remember the occasion (but again not the date) when one student woke up after a particularly drunken evening to find himself asleep in his bed in the middle of the Bowland quadrangle. He was surrounded by all the furniture and belongings from his room, meticulously reassembled in the original pattern by his friends after they had brought him and them down the stairs from C floor!
Bowland Bar and JCR were the centre of all University life, until first Lonsdale College and gradually other Colleges were added. One of my friends among the Physics students was the first Lonsdale JCR President. Their main business for a whole year was deciding a design in linoleum tiles for their JCR floor, by setting up a competition and then arguing over entries to select the most interesting. Agreement was eventually reached. In October they came back to their newly opened college, to find that a “chessboard” tile pattern had been laid on the floor. In the Building Office there was no remembrance that anything else had ever been considered. The pattern had been set not only for the floor, but also for relations between the Building Office and the Colleges.
Many students lived on baked beans and saved their money for beer. Originally the only catering outlet on campus was the Joint Refectory between Bowland and Lonsdale. The first successful mass student action at Lancaster (in 1968?) was prompted by a new catering manager, who raised the food standards overnight soon after his arrival. Suddenly the chips were crinkle cut and meals were interesting and delicious (Chicken Maryland rather than sausages). Even the vegetables were edible. Alas, these meals were significantly more expensive than before, at nearly 20p for two courses! A general meeting of students was called by the Student Representative Council and voted overwhelmingly for less quality and lower cost. Back we went to meat pies and straight chips.
It was around this time that the more left-wing student politicians first began to talk about “the Student Union”, but that title did not become officially recognised for a very long time. (Indeed it is likely that officially the Student Union did not exist under that name until the Revised Charter and Statutes, recently approved.) Student Representative Council elected officers were given a couple of rooms in University House, but after they organised a very unruly “sit-in” protest in the Senate Chamber they were moved out of there. The “sit-in” was once a regular feature of Bailrigg political life, and normally well regulated, but after that particular one University House was fortified. The student officers were expelled to rooms in what had been part of Bowland over the shops (Robinson’s, Birkett’s, etc.), where the Union stayed until Slaidburn House was built.
Bowland College residence and student activities were governed (then as now, in practice) by a Management Committee of elected staff and students. For many years this met on Monday evenings over a hot dinner. Doubtless many really important issues were considered at these meetings, but the only one I particularly remember now is the debate we had on toilet paper supplies. Although “soft” tissue (like everybody uses now) had become common for the public, the whole University was still using the traditional thin “hard” paper. A Bowland student officer proposed that the College should change to soft tissue, which was fiercely opposed on grounds of expense by Mrs Livingston, the Domestic Bursar (the equivalent post then to College Manager). However, after a long discussion, the other Senior College Officers (including me by then) sided with the students and the motion was carried. Mrs Livingston was instructed to propose the change to the University for Bowland residences. She declared it would be impossible to implement this as all the staff and students from other buildings would come to steal our tissues for their own use. This was probably true, and the happy outcome was that from that date the whole University was supplied with soft tissue! That is probably a good point at which to stop the endless memories. Bowland, always the pioneer. In the words which end all Degree Congregations, Long may the University (and the College) Prosper!