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100 Facts - Through the years

100 Facts

  1. Charles Edward Williams was the very first student to enrol in the University College in 1883. He returned in 1929 to pose outside Main Building with his son, John Norman Thomas – the 10,000th student to enrol.
  2. When the Prince of Wales opened the Tatem Laboratories in Main Building in 1930, he caused an international press sensation by travelling from London to Cardiff and back by air in a single day.
  3. Before the Prince arrived at the College (1930), Lord Glanely unveiled a statue of King George V which he had given, and a statue of Edward, Prince of Wales, given by Mr W.D. Caroe, the College Architect, which had been placed on niches above the main entrance to the College, where they still stand.
  4. The Tatem Laboratories were named after Lord Glanely, one of the greatest benefactors of the College.
  5. The Tatem Laboratories were further expanded in 1952, and again in 1962 by the building of a new wing, named after the son of Lord Glanely, the Shandon extension.
  6. Pock marks on the stonework above the rear entrance to Main Building still testify to the lingering ravages of the Second World War.
  7. In February 1941 the long corridor above the library in Main Building caught fire from an incendiary device that had lodged in the roof. Off-duty students had to form chains of buckets to help put out the fire.
  8. Two tablets hang on the first floor of Main Building to commemorate students and staff who died during the two World Wars. The First World War tablet was erected in 1926 and the Second World War tablet was unveiled in 1999.
  9. The task of collecting the names on the Second World War tablet was undertaken by Mr WH John, current Vice-President of the University, who had himself been a college fire-watcher during the Cardiff blitz.
    10. 1930 students prepare for the college yell prince

    1930 students prepare for the college yell prince

  10. Early in 1950, plans for a south wing were drawn up to house the Departments of Botany and Zoology by Messrs Caroe and Partners, the firm which, some fifty years earlier, has been the architects for the original part of the building.
  11. The south and north wings of New College were completed and opened by His Royal Highness the Duke of Edinburgh in July 1962, whereby the final additions were made to the 1905 building.
  12. Now housed together in the south wing for the first time, the Departments of Botany, Geology, and Zoology, organised a small joint expedition to Arctic Norway in the summer of 1962 – this seems to have been the first venture of this kind undertaken by the College.
  13. The Music department moved from Main Building to new premises in 1967. A departmental brochure issued in 1971 describes how room 205 and 212 in Main Building had served generations of music students and how “for many years choral rehearsals took place in room 10 (now the Natural Sciences Library) with its difficult acoustic, strangely resembling that of a swimming bath”.
  14. Many years prior to relocation from Main Building, the department of Music was home to a concert-performing piano trio. In 1946, the trio was expanded into a pianoforte quintet making Cardiff the first – and, for a long time, only – British university institution to have such an ensemble at its disposal.