Hulme Hall is a traditional
hall of residence at the
University of Manchester
The University of Manchester is a public university, public research university in Manchester, England. The main campus is south of Manchester city centre, Manchester City Centre on Wilmslow Road, Oxford Road. The University of Manchester is c ...
situated at the
Victoria Park Campus in
Rusholme
Rusholme () is an area of Manchester, in Greater Manchester, England, two miles south of the Manchester city centre, city centre. The population of the ward at the United Kingdom Census 2011, 2011 census was 13,643. Rusholme is bounded by Chorl ...
,
Manchester
Manchester () is a city and the metropolitan borough of Greater Manchester, England. It had an estimated population of in . Greater Manchester is the third-most populous metropolitan area in the United Kingdom, with a population of 2.92&nbs ...
. It houses 300 students and 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.
The hall is the oldest student accommodation in Manchester, founded in association with
Owens College Owens may refer to:
Places in the United States
* Owens Station, Delaware
* Owens Township, St. Louis County, Minnesota
* Owens, Missouri
* Owens, Ohio
* Owens, Texas
* Owens, Virginia
People
* Owens (surname), including a list of people with ...
. 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
In the United Kingdom, a listed building is a structure of particular architectural or historic interest deserving of special protection. Such buildings are placed on one of the four statutory lists maintained by Historic England in England, Hi ...
.
Along with
Dalton-Ellis Hall,
Ashburne Hall,
St. Anselm Hall, and
Woolton Hall
Woolton Hall is a former country house located in Woolton, a suburb of Liverpool, England. Built in 1704 and extensively renovated in 1772 by the influential architect Robert Adam, the building is praised as the finest example of Adam's work in ...
, Hulme is one of the five remaining traditional collegiate halls of residence at the University of Manchester. The hall is currently made up of a Junior Common Room of undergraduates, though formerly was home to a Senior Common Room.
History
The present-day University of Manchester has its roots in
Owens College Owens may refer to:
Places in the United States
* Owens Station, Delaware
* Owens Township, St. Louis County, Minnesota
* Owens, Missouri
* Owens, Ohio
* Owens, Texas
* Owens, Virginia
People
* Owens (surname), including a list of people with ...
. 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
The Church of England (C of E) is the State religion#State churches, established List of Christian denominations, Christian church in England and the Crown Dependencies. It is the mother church of the Anglicanism, Anglican Christian tradition, ...
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.
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
Oxford University Press (OUP) is the publishing house of the University of Oxford. It is the largest university press in the world. Its first book was printed in Oxford in 1478, with the Press officially granted the legal right to print books ...
.
In the mid-1950s, the University of Manchester announced plans to expand its residential capacity. By the end of the decade 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 1966–1967 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, former 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 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 21 January by the
Bishop of Manchester
The Bishop of Manchester is the Ordinary (officer), ordinary of the Church of England Anglican Diocese of Manchester, Diocese of Manchester in the Province of York.)
The current bishop is David Walker (Bishop of Manchester), David Walker who w ...
. It can seat 150 people and was designed with the idea of drama and musical productions as well as services.
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.
Buildings
Hulme Hall moved to its present site at Oxford Place in 1907. Following World War I, it first bought Oxford Lodge and Park House in 1919 and then Oaklands (known at the time as the Fielden Demonstration School) in 1926. In 1926 it was the largest island site in Victoria Park, with around eight acres. Expansion in the 1960s demolished most of the Victorian villas and replaced them with modern accommodation blocks. In 1994 further building work added another quadrangle between Burkhardt House and the John Hartshorne Centre.
Hulme's buildings are largely arranged in quadrangles set with trees, incorporating a mixture of the original structure, known as Houldsworth, and the newer blocks.
Houldsworth
Houldsworth, 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 20 students and a chapel. This building is now known as Houldsworth Hall. Hulme was designed by the architect
Percy Worthington
Sir Percy Scott Worthington (31 January 1864 – 15 July 1939) was an English architect.
He was born in Crumpsall, Manchester, the eldest son of the architect Thomas Worthington (architect), Thomas Worthington. He was educated at Clifton Colleg ...
in the
Arts and Crafts
The Arts and Crafts movement was an international trend in the Decorative arts, decorative and fine arts that developed earliest and most fully in the British Isles and subsequently spread across the British Empire and to the rest of Europe and ...
style, in red brick with
sandstone
Sandstone is a Clastic rock#Sedimentary clastic rocks, clastic sedimentary rock composed mainly of grain size, sand-sized (0.0625 to 2 mm) silicate mineral, silicate grains, Cementation (geology), cemented together by another mineral. Sand ...
dressings and green
slate
Slate is a fine-grained, foliated, homogeneous, metamorphic rock derived from an original shale-type sedimentary rock composed of clay or volcanic ash through low-grade, regional metamorphism. It is the finest-grained foliated metamorphic ro ...
roofs. It consists of three wings and two quadrangles. They are mainly in two storeys with paired
gable
A gable is the generally triangular portion of a wall between the edges of intersecting roof pitches. The shape of the gable and how it is detailed depends on the structural system used, which reflects climate, material availability, and aesth ...
s, and most of the windows are
mullion
A mullion is a vertical element that forms a division between units of a window or screen, or is used decoratively. It is also often used as a division between double doors. When dividing adjacent window units its primary purpose is a rigid sup ...
ed and
transomed with
casements. The common room in the east wing has two-storey
oriel window
An oriel window is a form of bay window which protrudes from the main wall of a building but does not reach to the ground. Supported by corbels, bracket (architecture), brackets, or similar cantilevers, an oriel window generally projects from an ...
s, and in an angle is a tower with an
embattled parapet
A parapet is a barrier that is an upward extension of a wall at the edge of a roof, terrace, balcony, walkway or other structure. The word comes ultimately from the Italian ''parapetto'' (''parare'' 'to cover/defend' and ''petto'' 'chest/brea ...
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. Houldsworth was given Grade II listing status in 1974. It saw £1.7 million of refurbishments in 2017 which included new furnishings and interior fittings, as well as renovations to the structure of the building itself.
The Chapel
The Hulme Hall Chapel appears in ''
Pevsner Architectural Guides
The ''Pevsner Architectural Guides'' are four series of guide books to the architecture of the British Isles. ''The Buildings of England'' series was begun in 1945 by the art historian Sir Nikolaus Pevsner, with its forty-six original volumes pu ...
'' of England. It is constructed in a
whorl
A whorl ( or ) is an individual circle, oval, volution or equivalent in a whorled pattern, which consists of a spiral or multiple concentric objects (including circles, ovals and arcs).
In nature
File:Photograph and axial plane floral diagra ...
shape with a deliberately ecumenical design. At the bequest of the
William Greer, Bishop of Manchester, 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".
Student life
Local student attractions to Hulme Hall include the
Whitworth Art Gallery
The Whitworth is an art gallery in Manchester, England, containing over 60,000 items in its collection. The gallery is located in Whitworth Park and is part of the University of Manchester.
In 2015, the Whitworth reopened after it was transfor ...
and the
Curry Mile on
Wilmslow Road
Wilmslow Road is a major road in Manchester, England, running from Parrs Wood northwards to Rusholme where it becomes the Oxford Road. The name of the road changes again to Oxford Street when it crosses the River Medlock before reaching Manchest ...
. Students at Hulme Hall are members of the JCR, and elect an executive committee each year who run events in the hall. The president of the JCR has been known as the Senior Student since 1985, before which they were known as the Senior Man.
Sport
Hulme Hall has long had a strong sporting tradition, regularly winning the Stopford Cup and Behrens Cup, for men's and women's inter-hall sports at the University of Manchester respectively. The main hall sport throughout the early and mid-20th century was
fives
Fives (historically known as hand-tennis) is an English handball sport derived from ''jeu de paume'', similar to the games of handball, Basque pelota, and squash. The game is played in both singles and doubles teams, in an either three- or f ...
, however this was replaced by
squash in 1967, the popularity of which has since declined. Hulme Hall students regularly represent both the hall and the university in a wide range of sports.
Hulme Hall offers students a multi use games area, a squash court, and a
gym
A gym, short for gymnasium (: gymnasiums or gymnasia), is an indoor venue for exercise and sports. The word is derived from the ancient Greek term " gymnasion". They are commonly found in athletic and fitness centres, and as activity and learn ...
.
The Victoria Park Bar
Since 1966 the Victoria Park Bar has been the epicentre of social life at the University of Manchester's Victoria Park campus. It was opened as the Hulme Hall Bar, initially for only two nights a week. In 1973 it first made a large enough profit to be registered for VAT. The bar was historically run by the Buttery Club, a committee of the JCR, however is now operated by the university's Bars on Campus. In 2016 it was renamed the Victoria Park Bar. There is a weekly quiz night on Thursdays, and events run by the JCR are regularly held in the bar.
Formal Hall
Hulme Hall is one of a few traditional halls of residence at the University of Manchester which hold
formal hall
Formal hall or formal meal is a meal held at some of the oldest universities in the United Kingdom and the Republic of Ireland (as well as some other Commonwealth countries) at which students usually dress in formal attire and often gowns t ...
. Formal hall takes place twice a
semester. At formals, all students sit to dinner together, and food is served to tables by catering staff rather than the usual refectory service. There is a
high table
The origin of "High Table" goes back to the physical layout of the dining halls of English colleges at Oxford and Cambridge Universities.
The high table is a table for the use of fellows (members of the Senior Common Room) and their guests in ...
where hall staff and the executive committee of the JCR sit. Guests invited to formals by the JCR also sit at the top table. Speeches are generally made by members of the JCR executive between the end of the main course and the serving of pudding. At the Christmas formal "
The Twelve Days of Christmas" is sung by the entire hall after speeches. Along with
St. Anselm Hall, Hulme is one of just two halls where
gowns
A gown, from the Latin word, ''gunna'', is a usually loose outer garment from knee-to-full-length worn by people of both sexes in Europe from the Early Middle Ages to the 17th century, and continuing today in certain professions; later, the t ...
are still worn at formal hall. Hulme Hall uses University of
Manchester undergraduate gowns, which are
University of London BA gowns with distinctive red piping around the shoulders. Since 2000 these have been supplied by
Ede & Ravenscroft.
Until the late 1990s, formal hall was every evening save Wednesday, and students had to purchase gowns for themselves. As formals today are not as regular, gowns are now provided by the JCR and students are not expected to purchase their own.
Gallery
The Old Cloister, Hulme Hall, University of Manchester.jpg, The old cloister
Hulme Hall, University of Manchester, Dining Hall.jpg, The dining hall
Hulme Hall, University of Manchester, Rear Quad West Wing.jpg, The Rear Quad
Hulme Hall, University of Manchester, Rear Quad East Wing.jpg, The Rear Quad
Hulme Hall, University of Manchester, Houldsworth Room.jpg, A room in Houldsworth
Hulme Hall, University of Manchester, Snooker Room.jpg, The Snooker Room
Hulme Hall, University of Manchester, Victoria Park Bar.jpg, The Victoria Park Bar
People associated with the Hall
Founders
File:William_Houldsworth.jpg, William Henry Houldsworth
File:Joseph_Gouge_Greenwood.jpg, Joseph Gouge Greenwood
File:Oliver_Heywood_statue,_Albert_Square.jpg, Oliver Heywood
Oliver Heywood (9 September 1825 – 1892) was an England, English banker and philanthropist.
Born in Irlam O'Th' Height, Lancashire, the son of Benjamin Heywood, and educated at Eton College, Heywood joined the family business, Heywood's ...
File:Richard_Copley_Christie.jpg, Richard Copley Christie
Principals
*
Rev. Evelyn Joseph Hone (1870–1874)
* Rev. Charles Bernard Drake (1874–1876)
Vacant (1876–1886)
Wardens
*
Rev. Edward Lee Hicks (1886–1892)
* Rev. Edwin Bourdieu England (1892–1903)
*
Rev. John Henry Hopkinson (1903–1914)
* Rev. Thomas Nicklin (1914–1937)
* Rev. Arthur Henry White (1937–1950)
*
Rev. John Flitcroft (1950–1964)
* Dr. John Norman Hartshorne (1964–1983)
* Dr. Graham Peter Rabey (1983–1985)
* Dr. W. Thain Flowers (1985–1997)
* Dr. Jackie Wilson (1997–2011)
* Michael Mercer (2011–2017)
ResLife Officers/Coordinators
* Katie Urnevitch (2017–2019)
* Nicola Runciman (2019–2020)
* Thomas Goodison (2020–)
Notable alumni
*
Arthur Aspinall (1901–1972), historian
*
Liv Boeree
Olivia "Liv" Boeree (born 18 July 1984) is a British science communicator, television presenter, host of the ''Win-Win'' podcast, and professional poker player. Dubbed "The Poker Queen", Boeree is a World Series of Poker (WSOP) and European Pok ...
(b. 1984), science communicator, television presenter and former professional
poker
Poker is a family of Card game#Comparing games, comparing card games in which Card player, players betting (poker), wager over which poker hand, hand is best according to that specific game's rules. It is played worldwide, with varying rules i ...
player
*
Niels Bohr
Niels Henrik David Bohr (, ; ; 7 October 1885 – 18 November 1962) was a Danish theoretical physicist who made foundational contributions to understanding atomic structure and old quantum theory, quantum theory, for which he received the No ...
(1885–1962), Danish
physicist
A physicist is a scientist who specializes in the field of physics, which encompasses the interactions of matter and energy at all length and time scales in the physical universe. Physicists generally are interested in the root or ultimate cau ...
who received the
Nobel Prize in Physics
The Nobel Prize in Physics () is an annual award given by the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences for those who have made the most outstanding contributions to mankind in the field of physics. It is one of the five Nobel Prizes established by the ...
in 1922. Stayed at Hulme Hall during his time at the University of Manchester in 1912
*George Norman Burkhardt (1900–1991), Dean of Science at the
Victoria University of Manchester
The Victoria University of Manchester, usually referred to as simply the University of Manchester, was a university in Manchester, England. It was founded in 1851 as Owens College. In 1880, the college joined the federal Victoria University. A ...
*
W. Edward Chadwick, delivered the 1909
Hulsean Lecture on the topi
''Social Relationships in the Light of Christianity''*
Clare Connor
Clare Joanne Connor (born 1 September 1976) is an English former cricketer who batted right-handed and bowled Left-arm orthodox spin, slow left arm spin. She held the presidency of Marylebone Cricket Club from 2021 until 2022. She made her Engl ...
(b. 1976), England cricket captain, first female president of
Marylebone Cricket Club
The Marylebone Cricket Club (MCC) is a cricket club founded in 1787 and based since 1814 at Lord's, Lord's Cricket Ground, which it owns, in St John's Wood, London, England. The club was the governing body of cricket from 1788 to 1989 and retain ...
*
Ashley Dukes (1885–1959), playwright, dramatist, theatre critic, and theatre manager. Founded the
Mercury Theatre
The Mercury Theatre was an independent repertory theatre company founded in New York City in 1937 by Orson Welles and producer John Houseman. The company produced theatrical presentations, radio programs and motion pictures. The Mercury also r ...
*
Michael Napier CBE KC, former president of the
Law Society and was the Attorney-General's pro bono envoy between 2001 and 2015. Senior Man of Hulme Hall, 1966–67
*
Freya North (b. 1967), author, one of the precursors of
chick lit
"Chick lit" is a term used to describe a type of popular fiction targeted at women. Widely used in the 1990s and 2000s, the term has fallen out of fashion with publishers, with numerous writers and critics rejecting it as inherently sexist. Nove ...
*
Maurice Oldfield (1915–1981), served as the seventh director of the
Secret Intelligence Service
The Secret Intelligence Service (SIS), commonly known as MI6 (MI numbers, Military Intelligence, Section 6), is the foreign intelligence service of the United Kingdom, tasked mainly with the covert overseas collection and analysis of Human i ...
(MI6), from 1973 to 1978
*
Eric Partridge
Eric Honeywood Partridge (6 February 1894 – 1 June 1979) was a New Zealand–United Kingdom, British lexicography, lexicographer of the English language, particularly of its slang. His writing career was interrupted only by his service in the ...
(1894–1979), a New Zealand–British
lexicographer
Lexicography is the study of lexicons and the art of compiling dictionaries. It is divided into two separate academic disciplines:
* Practical lexicography is the art or craft of compiling, writing and editing dictionary, dictionaries.
* The ...
of the English language, particularly of its
slang
A slang is a vocabulary (words, phrases, and linguistic usages) of an informal register, common in everyday conversation but avoided in formal writing and speech. It also often refers to the language exclusively used by the members of pa ...
*
H. Ellis Tomlinson (1916–1997), educationist and heraldist
*
Benjamin Wallfisch
Benjamin Mark Lasker Wallfisch (born 7 August 1979) is a British composer, conductor, and music producer known for his work on film scores. He has contributed to over 50 feature films since the mid-2000s, including notable works like ''Blade Ru ...
(b. 1979), composer of film scores, including ''
Blade Runner 2049
''Blade Runner 2049'' is a 2017 American Epic film, epic neo-noir science fiction film directed by Denis Villeneuve from a screenplay by Hampton Fancher and Michael Green (writer), Michael Green, based on a story by Fancher. A sequel to ''Blade ...
'', ''
Shazam!'', and ''
It''
*
Robin Waterfield
Robin Anthony Herschel Waterfield (born 6 August 1952) is a British classical scholar, translator, editor, and writer of children's fiction.
Career
Waterfield was born in 1952, and studied Classics at Manchester University, where he achieved a f ...
(b. 1952),
classical scholar
Classics, also classical studies or Ancient Greek and Roman studies, is the study of classical antiquity. In the Western world, ''classics'' traditionally refers to the study of Ancient Greek literature, Ancient Greek and Roman literature and ...
, translator, editor, and writer of children's fiction
Colours and arms
The hall has used the arms of its chief benefactor William Hulme since the 1880s. The arms as used by the hall are varied slightly, inverting the colours of the canton and chaplet. It is not known how this inversion came about, or whether it was a deliberate
difference
Difference commonly refers to:
* Difference (philosophy), the set of properties by which items are distinguished
* Difference (mathematics), the result of a subtraction
Difference, The Difference, Differences or Differently may also refer to:
Mu ...
. These arms have long been the basis of the hall colours, which are defined by a 1924 amendment to the original hall constitution (of 1917) as being navy, gold, and red.
Hall
colours
Color (or colour in Commonwealth English; see spelling differences) is the visual perception based on the electromagnetic spectrum. Though color is not an inherent property of matter, color perception is related to an object's light absorpt ...
were initially a
blue blazer with 1/4 inch white
piping
Within industry, piping is a system of pipes used to convey fluids (liquids and gases) from one location to another. The engineering discipline of piping design studies the efficient transport of fluid.
Industrial process piping (and accomp ...
and the hall arms embroidered on the pocket. These blazers saw a decline over the next few decades and in the 1980s new sporting colours were designed. These took the form of different ties, complementing the existing striped and crested hall tie:
* Navy with the Hulme arms – the hall tie
* Navy with the Hulme arms within a laurel wreath – half colours
* Burgundy with the Hulme arms within a laurel wreath – full colours
* Burgundy with the Hulme arms – the Senior Student's Award
See also
*
Listed buildings in Manchester-M14
*
William Hulme
*
Hulme Trust
References
Sources
*
*
{{coord, 53.4571, -2.2235, type:landmark_region:GB, display=title
University of Manchester halls of residence
Grade II listed buildings in Manchester
Buildings and structures completed in the 20th century
Hulme Trust