By James Lewis, Co-Editor-in-Chief
On June 9 1925, exactly 100 years ago today, Wills Memorial Building was opened by King George V and Queen Mary.
The arresting, neo-Gothic building, which many Freshers can be excused for thinking is a cathedral, has been the place of graduation, stressed exam seasons, and equal measures of life-pondering doom and elation for 100 cohorts of students.
The 66 metre tall tower not only houses a 9 1/2 tonne bell, which will be manually rung out for all of Bristol to hear today as part of celebrations, but is also home to Wills Memorial Library, the School of Earth Sciences, and the School of Law. Those graduating this summer will do so in the Great Hall, joining generations of students before them.
The building was commissioned in 1912, when architect George Oatley designed the last secular neo-Gothic-style building in the country. It was also the last building in the UK to be built using wooden scaffolding.
Construction began in 1915, but because of the First World War it was not finished until 1925. On the day of its opening, the King and Queen were presented with a set of gold keys to open the doors. Some people estimate that as many as 30,000 Bristolians gathered across Queens Road and Park Street to gawk at their monarch opening Bristol’s newest and (perhaps only eclipsed by the Clifton Suspension Bridge) most grand landmark.
The monolithic structure was commissioned by George Alfred Wills and Henry Herbert Wills to honour their late father, Henry Overton Wills III. The family accrued their wealth from the tobacco industry - which was largely cultivated by enslaved people in the Americas - and H. O. donated £100,000 (about £10 million in today’s money) in 1908 to see the creation of a university in Bristol. The University of Bristol opened just a year later and Overton became its first Chancellor.
While £100,000 is enough to make anyone’s eyes water even today, the family hailed from a family steeped in smelly breath – they sold tobacco. In fact, their company was the first to commercially produce rolled cigarettes. In 1901 fortune mounted fortune as the Wills’ family business joined hands with twelve other tobacco manufacturers to form Imperial Tobacco. Today, Imperial Tobacco are still headquartered in Bristol and own the brands Lambert & Butler, Golden Virginia and even Rizla.
George Oatley, the architect, has had an impressive impact on the geography of the University's campus. He was also the architect for the H.H. Wills Physics Department (1930); Wills Hall (1925); and Manor Hall (1932).
The building is not without controversy. In 2017, students at the University launched a petition to rename the building. They argued that while the Wills family did not own slaves or plantations, tobacco was a crop grown and cultivated primarily by slaves in the Caribbean and Americas, and profited even if indirectly from the Atlantic Slave Trade.
The petition states that H.O. Wills was granted position as the University’s first Chancellor only after ‘financing the university with slave-profited money.’ The petition gained 704 signatures, but the University maintained the names of buildings honouring the family.
In December 2022, the university held a meeting to discuss the findings of a public consultation on its connections with the slave trade ‘and to provide feedback on whether the University should be renaming its key buildings.’ On the University’s website, their position of maintaining the name is defended; ‘The Wills family were neither slaveowners nor slave-traders. The records of all 2,114 known Bristol slave-trading voyages do not mention the name ‘Wills’.’
Professor Evelyn Welch, Vice-Chancellor of the University of Bristol said: ‘The Wills Memorial Building has been an integral part of the student journey for generations, seeing thousands learn, grow and graduate beneath its vaulted ceilings.
‘It’s place in the city’, she added ‘reminds us of important lessons from the University’s past, which stand together with the limitless potential of its future.’
In any case, notwithstanding the controversies that shroud this building and others, Wills Memorial Building stands as a testament to the University’s idea of itself as a world-leading institution. The building has come to be synonymous with the city it inhabits while also commemorating a figure whose money was pivotal in the establishment of the university.
Do you think Wills Memorial Building should be renamed?
Featured image: Epigram/Dan Hutton
