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Henry Overton Wills III, of tobacco manufacturing company WD & HO Wills, endows £100,000 for "a university for Bristol and the West of England", as long as the charter is granted within two years. -
King Edward VII grants the University a Royal Charter. Flags fly and bells ring across the city. The Corporation of Bristol also grants the proceeds of a ‘penny rate’ (about £7,000 a year) for the projected university. -
The academic staff of University College, Bristol gather for the last group photo before the College becomes the University of Bristol. The two women on the left are Miss Pearce (Botany) and Miss Staveley (Women’s Tutor). -
Henry Overton Wills III is appointed first Chancellor of the University. -
Professor Conwy Lloyd Morgan (left), a renowned psychologist, serves briefly as first Vice-Chancellor but then resigns and is succeeded by Sir Isambard Owen (right). -
The Chemistry and Physiology Building in Woodland Road is completed at a cost of £50,000 and opened on 15 November by William Henry Wills (Lord Winterstoke), brother of Henry Overton Wills III. The architect is George Oatley, who also designed the Wills Memorial Building. -
Liberal and Labour politician Richard Burden Sanderson Haldane, 1st Viscount Haldane of Cloan (pictured here with King George V), is appointed second Chancellor of the University, following the death of Henry Overton Wills III. -
The Bristol Blind Asylum and neighbouring Volunteers’ Drill Hall on Queen’s Road are acquired for the University by George and Henry Herbert Wills, completing the University’s ownership of an area of land now known as ‘The Triangle’ (University Road, Woodland Road and Queen’s Road). -
Bristol staff and students killed in action are remembered in The Nonesuch student magazine. Top row (l to r): 2nd Lt HF Parsons VC, Cpt Griffiths. Bottom row (l to r): 2nd Lt RE Kimber, Lt FO Bate. -
The National Fruit and Cider Institute at Long Ashton, at the request of the Board of Agriculture, sets about maximising food production by intercropping all available land with potatoes and vegetables and helps the government with new schemes for food production and preservation. -
Helen Wodehouse is appointed Professor of Education, thereby becoming the first female Chair at Bristol and one of the first women in any British university to hold such a post. -
George Wills buys the Victoria Rooms and endows it to the University for use as the Students’ Union. -
Thomas Loveday is appointed third Vice-Chancellor of the University. -
The Department of Extra-Mural Adult Education Studies is established. -
On 9 June, the Wills Memorial Building is opened by King George V and Queen Mary, pictured here with Winston Churchill. The final cost of the building work is £501,566 19s 10d (approximately £21 million in today’s terms). -
The Henry Herbert Wills Physical Laboratory is opened by Nobel Prize-winner Ernest Rutherford. -
Winston Churchill, former Chancellor of the Exchequer and future Prime Minister, is appointed the University's third Chancellor. -
The University’s Professor Walker Hall and the City’s Medical Officer of Health, Dr David Davies, establish a new Department of Preventative Medicine in Canynge Hall. By 1932 they are training health visitors – with great beneficial effects for the people of Bristol. -
Winifred Lucy Shapland, Secretary of the University since 1928, is appointed Registrar, making her the first female registrar of any British university. -
Paul Adrien Maurice Dirac, a Bristol engineering graduate, wins the Nobel Prize for physics (jointly with Erwin Schrödinger) for the discovery of new, productive forms of atomic theory. -
Bristol Medical School, established in 1833 and later amalgamated with University College, Bristol, celebrates its centenary with a banquet in the Victoria Rooms. -
Dr Vernon Charley, a scientist at the University’s Long Ashton Agriculture and Horticulture Research, develops Ribena. The now-famous blackcurrant drink provided an important alternative source of vitamin C during the war years when oranges were in scarce supply. -
Under the new University and Colleges (Emergency Provisions) Bill, students from King’s College London, Middlesex, and Guy’s and St Thomas’s are evacuated to the University.
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During a major Bristol air raid, the Wills Memorial Building is hit by an incendiary bomb and the Great Hall and the organ are destroyed. At the time, the building houses the library of King’s College, London, which, ironically, had been removed to Bristol for safety. Thousands of books are destroyed. -
After one of the worst bombing raids during the ‘Bristol Blitz’, Churchill confers honorary degrees on the American ambassador to Britain, John Gilbert Winant, and the Australian Prime Minister, Robert Gordon Menzies. -
Professor AM Tyndall is appointed Acting Vice-Chancellor, following the retirement of Dr Loveday. -
Bristol establishes a Department of Drama, the first such department in any British university and the first to introduce the practical and theoretical study of film and television. -
Philip (later Sir Philip) Morris is appointed fourth Vice-Chancellor of the University. -
The School of Veterinary Science in Park Row is inaugurated by the Minister of Agriculture. A year later, the School opens its doors to its first students.
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Cecil Frank Powell, who joined the University in 1927, receives the Nobel Prize in Physics.