Red Brick universities

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Red Brick originally referred to the six 'civic' British universities which were founded in the industrial cities of England in the Victorian era and which achieved university status before World War II. The modern term roughly equates to those members of the so-called Russell group of universities founded between 1850 and 1960, although the terms are by no means mutually exclusive.

The civic university movement started in 1851 with Owens College, Manchester (now the University of Manchester), which became the founding college of the federal Victoria University in 1880 and attained university status when the federal university was dissolved in 1903.

The Aston Webb building, Birmingham

The six civic universities were:

These universities were distinguished by being non-collegiate institutions that admitted men without reference to religion or background and concentrated on imparting to their students 'real-world' skills, often linked to engineering. In this sense, they owed their heritage to University College London and to the Humboldt University of Berlin, both of which emphasised practical knowledge over the merely academic sort. This focus on the practical also distinguished the red brick universities from the ancient English universities of Oxford and Cambridge and from the newer (although still pre-Victorian) University of Durham, collegiate institutions which concentrated on Divinity, the liberal arts and imposed religious tests (e.g., assent to the Thirty-Nine Articles) on staff and students. Scotland's ancient universities (St Andrews, Glasgow, Aberdeen, and Edinburgh), were founded on a different basis.

The term 'red brick' was first coined by a professor of Spanish (Edgar Allison Peers) at the University of Liverpool to describe these civic universities (under the pseudonym 'Bruce Truscot' in his 1943 book 'Redbrick University'). (More information can be found in his autobiography "Redbrick University Revisited", Liverpool University Press, 1996) His reference was inspired by the fact that The Victoria Building at the University of Liverpool (which was designed by Alfred Waterhouse and completed in 1892) is built from a distinctive red pressed brick, with terracotta decorative dressings. On this basis, the University of Liverpool (which was itself originally part of the aforementioned Victoria University together with Owens College in Manchester) can be argued to be the 'original' red brick university. With the Birmingham University Act receiving assent on 24th May 1900, the first red brick university to receive its Royal Charter was the University of Birmingham.

Victoria Building tower, Liverpool

However, the term was to become more nebulous. The University of Reading, founded in the late 19th century as an extension college of Oxford, receiving its charter in 1926. Despite being the first university to be based on a self-contained campus, Reading is often classed as one of the civic universities and is therefore 'red brick,' as is Queen's University Belfast which became a civic university in 1908, having previously been established in 1845 as an university college of the Queen's University, Ireland (which was later renamed as Royal University of Ireland).

Firth Court, University of Sheffield

University College London itself, and colleges from the 19th and early 20th centuries which later achieved university status prior to 1963, are also sometimes described as 'red brick'; this broader designation includes institutions such as the University of Exeter (originally an extension college of Cambridge), Newcastle University (originally King's College, Durham), and the Universities of Hull, Leicester, Nottingham and Southampton (until the 1950s, all were colleges with degrees being awarded by the University of London). The University of Dundee, formerly 'University College Dundee', was founded in the late 19th Century and spent many years as a constituent college of the University of St Andrews. It has many features in common with the original 'Red brick' universities of large northern English cities. The term is now also extended to cover the original constituent institutions of the University of Wales (Aberystwyth, Bangor, Swansea and Cardiff) and St David's College, Lampeter (originally independent, but now part of the University of Wales). The smallest and latest University to achieve red brick status is the University of Leicester.

Keble College, Oxford is notable for being both a red-brick college within the University of Oxford, and a 'Red brick'-style institution which places a similarly strong emphasis on engineering and sciences.

In 1963, the Robbins Report recommended expansion of the British university system, and the universities established after this report are often known as the "plate glass universities".