Hulme Hall, Manchester

Hulme Hall is a University of Manchester hall of residence situated at the Victoria Park Campus in Rusholme, Manchester, housing 300 students. It has a range of facilities including the John Hartshorne Centre: a 300 seat lecture theatre with attached seminar rooms; a library; Junior Common Room and study spaces; music room; old dining hall; the Victoria Park bar; and chapel. Local student attractions include the Whitworth Art Gallery and the Curry Mile on Wilmslow Road.

The hall is the oldest student accommodation in Manchester, founded in association with Owens College. It was named after the Lancashire lawyer and landowner William Hulme whose Hulme Trust funded the Hall's foundation. It is a Grade II listed building. It should not be confused with the historic Hulme Hall in Hulme, Manchester, on the right bank of the River Irwell, which has been demolished.

History

The present-day University of Manchester has its roots in Owens College. As the academic profile of the college grew students began coming from outside Manchester, which led to increased need for halls of residence to be attached to the college. These had first been suggested in 1856 to promote discipline, but nothing came of this until 1869, when several meetings were held between figures of Manchester’s intellectual and philanthropic class with the end of establishing a Church of England hall of residence. The leaders of this project were Manchester MPs Sir William Houldsworth and Hugh Birley, though they were joined by philanthropist Richard Copley Christie and then president of Owens College Joseph Gouge Greenwood. Today these founders can be found in the names of various accommodation blocks at Hulme Hall. These men appealed to the Hulme Trust, a charity established in 1691 by William Hulme for assistance, however the trust was unable to provide.

The hall opened at 174 Plymouth Grove in 1870, however due to its financial situation was short lived and closed in 1876. This was the first hall of residence opened in connection to Owens College, and one of the first outside Oxford and Cambridge in the country. The hall was a private entity separate to the then Owen's College, with funds provided by Sir William Houldsworth, a prominent Manchester businessman, and the Hulme Trust, and was administered by a board of governors. Membership initially was for male students at Owens College, and later the University of Manchester. In 1886 the hall reached an agreement with the Hulme Trust providing £1,000 a year, half of which was to be spent on scholarships, and the hall - now named Hulme Hall - was opened to students.

The oldest part of the Hulme Hall complex of buildings, was constructed in 1907, making an initial 'T' shape and incorporating an existing building as the warden's house, with a later wing added for another twenty students and a chapel. This building is now known as Houldsworth Hall. Hulme was designed by the architect Percy Worthington in Arts and Crafts style, in red brick with sandstone dressings and green slate roofs. It consists of three wings two quardangles. They are mainly in two storeys with paired gables, and most of the windows are mullioned and transomed with casements. The common room in the east wing has two-storey oriel windows, and in an angle is a tower with an embattled parapet and an octagonal stair turret. Houldsworth has larger rooms and kitchens than the more modern blocks of Hulme Hall, and contains the hall library, music room, old dining hall, and the Junior Common Room. It saw £1.7 million renovation in 2017 which included new furnishings and interior fittings, as well as renovations to the structure of the building itself.

In 1933 a short history of Hulme Hall's first incarnation was written by then warden Thomas Nicklin, and published by the Oxford University Press.

By the late 1950s many independent halls of residence in Manchester were at risk of folding, and the University gradually assumed responsibility for the upkeep of many halls, including Hulme in 1962. In 1966-7 work was carried out by Bernard Taylor & Partners to build five new accommodation blocks: Christie (named for Richard Copley Christie, one of the hall's secretaries), Oaklands, Greenwood (named for Joseph Gouge Greenwood, then Principal of Owen's College and a member of the hall's original Committee of Management in 1870), Birley (named for Hugh Birley), and Plymouth; along with a new dining hall, bar, and common room. The old warden's lodge, and a number of other buildings around Hulme, were demolished to make space for the new accommodation. The largest of the blocks, Oaklands, consists of four floors of student accommodation. Each floor contains two kitchens, male and female bathrooms and the first floor also contains the Oaklands common room and the "Sky bridge" connection to the Christie block. Thanks to this physical connection to Christie and subsequently to the table tennis and snooker building. Oaklands is at the heart of a structure with a larger number of student rooms than any other building in Hulme hall.

1968 saw the construction of the chapel, which was designed by the architect JRG Seward, and dedicated on the 21st of January by the Bishop of Manchester. It can seat 150 people and was designed with the idea of drama and musical productions as well as services. At the bequest of the bishop the east window frames a view of a beech tree, as he said that, "a view of nature was infinitely preferable to the art of man".

In 1985 Hulme Hall accepted female students for the first time, initially on a trial basis. This proved successful and by the end of the 1980s the hall was officially mixed.
In 1992 Hulme's only self-catered block, Burkhardt House, was constructed, housing an extra 129 students. It is named after George Norman Burkhardt, who was Dean of Science at the university in 1968, and his wife Carol. Burkhardt House proved popular as student residences were increasingly self catered and ensuite, and over the next decade Hulme Hall's two remaining Victorian villas - Park House and Jubilee House - were closed down.

Wardens

Plymouth Grove Wardens

* Evelyn Joseph Hone (1870–74)
* Charles Bernard Drake (1874–76)

Hulme Hall Wardens

* Edward Lee Hicks (1886–92)
* Edwin Bourchier England (1892-1903)
* John Henry Hopkinson (1903–14)
* Thomas Nicklin (1914–37)
* Arthur Henry White (1937–50)
* John Flitcroft (1950–64)
* John Norman Hartshorne (1964–83)
* Dr. Graham Peter Rabey (1983–85)
* W Thain Flowers (1985–97)
* Dr. Jackie Wilson (1997-2011)
* Michael Mercer (2011–17)

Notable alumni

Ordered alphabetically by surname.
* Arthur Aspinall, historian.
* Liv Boeree, science communicator, television presenter and former professional poker player.
*Niels Bohr, Danish physicist who received the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1922. Stayed at Hulme Hall during his time at the University of Manchester in 1912.
* George Norman Burkhardt, Dean of Science at the Victoria University of Manchester.
*W. Edward Chadwick, delivered the 1909 Hulsean Lecture on the topi
''Social Relationships in the Light of Christianity''
* Ashley Dukes, playwright, dramatist, theatre critic, and theatre manager. Founded the Mercury Theatre.
*Maurice Oldfield, served as the seventh director of the Secret Intelligence Service (MI6), from 1973 to 1978.
*Eric Partridge, a New Zealand– British lexicographer of the English language, particularly of its slang.
*H. Ellis Tomlinson, educationist and heraldist.
* Benjamin Wallfisch, composer of film scores, including ''Blade Runner 2049'', ''Shazam!'', and '' It''.
*Robin Waterfield, classical scholar, translator, editor, and writer of children's fiction.

See also

* Listed buildings in Manchester-M14
* William Hulme
* Hulme Trust

References

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University of Manchester halls of residence
Grade II listed buildings in Manchester
Buildings and structures completed in the 20th century
Hulme Trust