Introduction
This book considers a crucial moment in the development of English higher education. During the Age of Reform, new and innovative ideas about the role and purpose of a university were moving at an unprecedented pace. Proposals for new institutions in all parts of the country were developing more quickly than at any point since the years of the Commonwealth. And, unlike the proposals made during the seventeenth century that uniformly failed, during the Age of Reform several attempts to create new universities were successful.1 This included within a five-year period from 1828 to 1833 the opening of London University , King’s College , London and Durham University. Each of these institutions, in very different ways, represented a radical departure from the higher education status quo. The creation of the federal University of London as a resolution to the problems caused by the opening of the two London colleges, and the consequent renaming of London University to become University College, London, followed in 1836.2 This created a landscape for higher education that remained in place until 1851 when Owens College opened in Manchester.
This brief period between 1828 and 1833 was witness to an unprecedented expansion of English higher education. The years between 1800 and 1870 more broadly form a pivotal ‘University moment’ during which a plethora of new higher education models were entertained across the country. For the first time, this meant there was a sustained English higher education sector, as for the first time there were other English universities besides the ancient establishments at Oxford and Cambridge.
Durham is the central node of my analysis and the heart of this book. That is not because it is the most important foundation of the period—both London University (later University College, London) and the federal University of London have a better claim to that title—but it is because it is the most neglected and misunderstood institution of the period. The aim of this book is rather to reinterpret this period in higher education by bringing forward a new understanding of what happened at Durham, to set primarily the London colleges in a different context and thereby create a different narrative about how higher education developed in the period. Although much of this book therefore focuses on events in Durham, it does use that analysis to create a narrative about a system of higher education in development rather than a series of disconnected institutional initiatives.
To place Durham at the heart of this has required considerable original research, which is not the case with the other institutions covered, which have been well researched and are amply covered in secondary literature. My research into Durham’s history has been grounded in a thorough examination of primary and secondary sources. Intensive use has been made of archival material, principally in Durham and Oxford, including previously unused sources. Parliamentary reports, local and national newspapers, and other primary printed sources have also been employed. An extensive and unique database of Durham University students has been created that includes over 6000 records, extending from the first entrants in 1833 to 1905. Statistics derived from these records have been compared to existing published information for other institutions, notably King’s College , London.
The Historiography of Higher Education in the Age of Reform
Remarkable though this period is for the history of higher education in England, it has received relatively little academic interest. This is especially true at the level of the higher education sector, as the history of higher education has more traditionally been written as the separate histories of individual institutions. However, even in this respect, at the level of the institution, there remains a significant imbalance.
Both Oxford and Cambridge have been the subjects of ample, detailed and very wide-ranging historical research. As the oldest universities in England—indeed, as two of the oldest universities anywhere—an enormous variety of books about the universities and their constituent colleges have been produced over an extended period. These include recent multi-volume and detailed scholarly accounts of both places. The History of the University of Oxford is of note for its sheer breadth and scale: although it was published between 1984 and 2000, work on it had commenced in 1968.3 The series covered the University’s development from the eleventh to the twentieth centuries in eight volumes of thorough research.4 A History of the University of Cambridge covered that institution’s growth from its earliest foundation to 1990 over four volumes published between 1988 and 2004.5 New histories of the universities, and their constituent colleges, continue to appear annually based on the rich sources available in both primary and secondary materials. In relation to Oxford, this includes, by way of example, The University of Oxford: A History by L.W.B. Brockliss from 2016 and histories of both Oxford and Cambridge produced by G.R. Evans in 2010.6 This book is not intended to add greatly to our understanding of these two institutions, though it does help to locate some of the developments at Oxford and Cambridge in the nineteenth century in the wider context of the creation of the English higher education sector more generally.
Although the volumes of academic research into Oxford and Cambridge far surpass that conducted into any other English university, London’s new institutions, and especially University College, London and the University of London , have also received considerable attention. F.M.G. Willson’s two substantial and very detailed books, Our Minerva and The University of London, 1858–1900: The Politics of Senate and Convocation, are good examples.7 Less detailed, but serving as excellent general introductions, are the two books by Negley Harte, The World of UCL 1828–2004 and The University of London 1836–1986, the former written with John North.8 The earliest work on University College, London was the centenary history published in 1929 by Hugh Hale Bellot .9 Bellot had been appointed to the Department of History at University College, London in 1921, though in 1927 he moved to the University of Manchester. His history of the College remains the reference text for any historian interested in the College’s first century.
As the developments in London are part of the accepted narrative concerning the positive development of English higher education, they are also covered in detail in numerous other places too. William Whyte, for example, goes into the London story in some detail in his recent book Redbrick: A Social and Architectural History of Britain’s Civic Universities.10 This book is also one of a limited number which look at the general development of higher education rather than the progress of an individual institution alone. Robert Anderson’s British Universities Past and Present also covers the foundation of the London colleges, though in less detail, but it is one of the best general introductions to the development of universities in the UK from about 1800 onward...