Welsh Journals

Search over 450 titles and 1.2 million pages

The Report of Lord Aberdare's Committee of Enquiry into Higher Education in Wales appeared in 1881. Amongst other things, it recommended that a college be set up in Glamorganshire to meet the needs of South Wales and that 'the College at Aberystwith, whether retained on its present site or removed to Caernarvon or Bangor, must be accepted as the college for North Wales'. If this put the con- tinuance of the college at Aberystwyth in jeopardy, it raised a new hope in Bangor hearts. The Glamorgan college was sited at Cardiff and opened in 1883. And as it happened, the college at Aberystwyth remained there. The campaign to get the new North Wales college sited at Bangor was set in motion early in 1882. The discussions led to the convening of a conference at Chester on 22 January 1883, chaired by Lord Aberdare. It appointed a Site Com- mittee to consider the claims of the various towns interested in providing a home for the college. At the beginning there were thirteen contenders but they were not all equally serious. It will be of interest to natives of Flintshire to know that Rhyl was amongst the more serious contenders. Among other favourable qualifications, its spokesmen proclaimed, it had a wide band of sand providing 'a continuous supply of free ozone from the advancing and receding tides'. This, of course, would be very beneficial to the health of students. And as one reared on that free ozone, I can testify to its health-giving properties. But they boasted also that English as spoken in Rhyl was 'free from any provincial idiom or accent'. If so, my experience tells me there was a dramatic linguistic change between 1882 and 1926, when I first attended Christ Church School! The responsibility for choosing from amongst the six finalists was transferred to three arbitrators. They made their award on 24 August 1883 and Bangor became the selected site for the new college. The college opened on 18 October 1884. Its first home was the Penrhyn Hotel, long since demolished. It overlooked Port Penrhyn on the way out of Bangor in the direction of Conwy. It was on 14 July 1911 that the present building on the hill was opened. One point that emerges very clearly from Professor Williams's narrative the intense local interest in the college. The opening day was never forgotten by those who lived in Bangor at the time. And no wonder. It was a day which combined civic pomp, military display, fireworks, bands and every con- ceivable form of jollification. But even more suggestive was the fact that in the two-mile long procession there were 3,000 quarrymen marching four abreast In the campaign that culminated in the opening of the college many distinguished people had participated, people like Dean H. T. Edwards, William Rathbone, Herber Evans, Lord Aberdare, the Earl of Powis and many others. But their enthusiasm fused with that of a very large number of working people. Professor Williams examines closely the popular tradition that the college was built with 'the pennies of the working class'. His conclusion is that the claim is justified. Many thousands contributed and when their low incomes are taken into account, they contributed with great generosity. Of course, the total of their gifts did not