In June this year, UCL launched the UCL Walking Tour, a free guided walking tour aimed at inviting members of the public onto campus to learn more about UCL as a university and research institution and embrace its place at the heart of the Bloomsbury community.
This month, host Cerys alongside Ariana Razavi, Molly Rashbash and Chanju Mwanza, delve deeper into three of the tours stops, the Wilkins Building, the Petrie Museum and the Student Centre and discuss the role that these places on campus have on the people who use them every day – students and staff.
While these buildings form key parts of UCL’s history, they are just a small part of the tour, only by taking the full tour can visitors learn about the noble laureates and the famous alumni that have studied or researched at UCL, the mysterious secret tunnels that run under the Cruciform building and the Japanese Garden which stands as a symbol of UCL’s diverse community and international links.
Act 1: The Wilkins Building
The Wilkins Building is the focal point of UCL’s Bloomsbury Campus. It was designed by William Wilkins, perhaps best known for designing the National Gallery in Trafalgar Square. At the time it was built, London looked very different and the area resembled a swampy wasteland on the edge of London, with one newspaper calling it a ‘large space of mud and nastiness’.
The foundation stone was laid on 30 April 1827 by The Duke of Sussex, sixth son of George III. However, the remainder of the quad wasn’t fully completed until 1985 when it was opened by Her Majesty the Queen. It was on this visit that the driver of her car actually crashed into one of the bollards in front of the Portico.
Ariana explores the Henry Wilkins Building in greater depth and interviews students on their favourite areas in the main UCL library, which can be found in the building.
Act 2: The Petrie Museum
Flinders Petrie was a pioneering archaeologist whose impact is still felt today. He was the first Egyptology professor in the UK, a role that was established at UCL in 1892 due to a bequest by women’s rights campaigner, writer and Egyptologist Amelia Edwards. She also bequeathed her collection of around a thousand Egyptian objects and her library to UCL. She deliberately chose UCL as it was the first university in the UK to award degrees to women.
Petrie first travelled to Egypt in 1880 and he went on to excavate for forty years in Egypt and the Egyptian authorities allowed him to take his finds to England where many of them ultimately became part of the UCL collection. Petrie was much more scientific and methodical in his approach to archaeological digs compared to what had gone before, and introduced methods similar to those used today.
Act 3: The Student Centre
Opened in 2019 and built to be one of the greenest, the Student Centre is on of the most sustainable buildings in the UK. This was achieved by using highly durable materials, installing automatic windows that naturally ventilate the building, planting a green roof, and adding 250 square metres of electric solar panels.
The Student Centre features the auto-icon of UCL’s spiritual founder, Jeremy Bentham along with a rare piece for Turner Prize winning artist and UCL alum, Rachel Whiteread. The sculpture is a cast of a notice board in the Slade School of Art, and if you look carefully you can see the “ghosts” of messages pinned to the original board inside the resin. It is one of only two permanent public works by the artist in the UK.
In this Act, we speak to the Student Centre manager and the students who use the space every day.
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