Bulmershe Court

Bulmershe Court is, today, a campus of the University of Reading, situated in what is now the Reading suburb of Woodley, in the English county of Berkshire. Historically, Bulmershe Court has been the name of a manor and of two quite distinct country houses, one of which still stands but is now known as Bulmershe Manor.

History

Bulmershe first appears in existing records in the 12th century as a place in the parish of Sonning. The first reference to it as a manor was in 1447 when it was granted to Reading Abbey. After the dissolution of the monasteries, the land was acquired by the poet William Gray. He probably built the first house here, the remains of which may be the basis of the present Bulmershe Manor.

Gray's wife, Agnes, was the widow of Robert Blagrave, a merchant of London and Reading and their son, John was Gray's heir. Through this the Blagrave family came to own Bulmershe Court, although both John Blagrave the mathematician and Daniel Blagrave the regicide resided at the family's other residence, at Southcote House in what is now the Reading suburb of Southcote.

The main branch of the Blagrave family died out in 1789, and the estate was sold to Henry Addington, then Speaker of the British House of Commons. At the same time he purchased the adjoining Woodley House, which had been built some seven years earlier.

Addington preferred to live in the more modern structure, and in time the name Bulmershe Court transferred over to that building. The earlier Bulmershe Court became known as Old Bulmershe Court. For a time it fell into disrepair, but was restored in the 1920s and renamed Bulmershe Manor. Bulmershe Manor is a Grade II* listed building.

The newer Bulmershe Court was used by the War Office during World War II, but was pulled down in 1962 to make way for an educational establishment called Berkshire College of Education which opened two years later. Principally a centre for Teacher Training, the institution later broadened by offering a range of higher education courses validated by the now defunct (CNAA). It became Bulmershe College in 1975.

Bulmershe College of Higher Education

As Bulmershe College of Higher Education (BCHE), alongside existing BEd and other education qualifications, the new establishment ran a range of BA Honours courses in humanities subjects such as History, Geography, and English. The American Studies programme ran a regular exchange with students in America's Boston University, Massachusetts. And courses in Modern European Literature and Film and Drama Studies were especially prestigious. Film director Richard Kwietniowski taught on the latter course during the mid Eighties, as did one-time Channel Four Commissioning Editor Stuart Cosgrove.

With the full support of Principal Harold Silver, he College also became a locus for a wide range of activities related to the deaf community. Within a space of a few years, it offered a Theatre of the Deaf course of study, housed offices for both the Berkshire Consortium Support Services and the national charity Friends for the Young Deaf Trust (FYD), and was home to the first-ever profoundly deaf Student Union President, Craig Crowley.

Suddenly finding itself facing extreme financial pressure as part of a national education funding squeeze at the latter days of the Thatcher government (under Keith Joseph, Kenneth Baker and others), the future of the College (and others in a similar position) then became in doubt. Principal Brian Palmer led a widespread study of all available options (including a drastic cutback of its expanded provision) and after these had been fully investigated, Bulmershe then merged with the University of Reading in 1989. The merger secured its funding and thus safeguarded a large number of its courses and staff, both academic and administrative.

The site is now the Bulmershe Court Campus of that university, housing its Faculty of Education and Community Studies. It continues to house specialisms and offer courses in education, community studies, social work, and film, theatre and television studies.

Original buildings have been retained and updated, including a £1m refurbishment of the existing Bob Kayley Studio building (named after the first Head of Film and Drama at Bulmershe College) into a fully fitted 90 seater theatre also open to the public. The former Bridges Hall space was coverted into a lecture theatre. And several new student halls of residence were built on the site as part of the new Bulmershe Hall. One of the original halls continues to bear the name Blagrave in testament to the long history of buildings on the site.

Bulmershe Court Campus (Reading University)

The University's Bulmershe Court Campus is home to its Institute of Education and the School of Health and Social Care. The student accommodation of Bulmershe Hall is also on the campus. It is made up of many different buildings, some of those being hostels retained from the original Bulmershe College - including Mitford, Penn, Winchcombe and Blagrave - and some newly built on merger with the University, including Hollins and Huntley.

References

*David Nash Ford (2004). [http://www.berkshirehistory.com/castles/bulmershe_court.html Royal Berkshire History - Old Bulmershe Court] . Retrieved July 31, 2005.
*David Nash Ford (2004). [http://www.berkshirehistory.com/castles/woodley_lodge.html Royal Berkshire History - Woodley Lodge] . Retrieved July 31, 2005. It is made up of many different halls, including Mitford, Penn, Hollins, Huntley, Winchcombe and Blagrave.

External links

*oscoor|SU749729_region:GB_scale:100000|Map sources for Bulmershe Court Campus.
* [http://www.rdg.ac.uk/maps/bulmershe.htm Bulmershe Court page] from the University web site.