page_title: University of East Anglia
section_title: 1960s
hierarchical_section_title: University of East Anglia / History / 1960s
caption_attribution_description: English: Norfolk Terrace and Attached Walkways, at the University of East AngliaThis is a photo of listed building number 1390647.
context_page_description: The University of East Anglia is a public research university in Norwich, England. Established in 1963 on a 320 acres campus west of the city centre, the university has four faculties and 26 schools of study. The annual income of the institution for 2016–17 was £273.7 million of which £35.6 million was from research grants and contracts, with an expenditure of £262.6 million.
context_section_description: People in Norwich began to talk about the possibility of setting up a university in the nineteenth century, and attempts to establish one in Norwich were made in 1919 and 1947. But due to a lack of government funding on both occasions the plans had to be postponed. The University of East Anglia was eventually given the green light in April 1960 for biological sciences and English studies students. Initially, teaching took place in the temporary "University Village", which was officially opened by chairman of the University Grants Committee, Keith Murray, on 29 September 1963. Sited on the opposite side of the Earlham Road to the present campus, this was a collection of prefabricated structures designed for 1200 students, laid out by the local architectural firm Feilden and Mawson. There were no residences. The vice-chancellor and administration were based in nearby Earlham Hall.
  In 1961, the first vice-chancellor, Frank Thistlethwaite, had approached Denys Lasdun, an adherent of the "New Brutalist" trend in architecture, who was at that time building Fitzwilliam College, Cambridge, to produce designs for the permanent campus. The site chosen was on the western edge of the city, on the south side of Earlham Road. The land, formerly part of the Earlham Hall estate was at that time occupied by a golf course. Lasdun unveiled a model and an outline plan at a press conference in April 1963, but it took another year to produce detailed plans, which diverged considerably from the model. The first buildings did not open until late 1966.
  Lasdun put all the teaching and research functions into the "teaching wall", a single block 460 metres (1,510 feet) long following the contour of the site. Alongside this he built a walkway, giving access to the various entrances of the wall, with access roads beneath. Attached to the other, southern, side of the walkway he added the groups of terraced residences that became known as "Ziggurats". In 1968, Lasdun was replaced as architect by Bernard Feilden, who completed the teaching wall and library and created an arena-shaped square as a social space of a kind not envisioned in his predecessor's plans. They would later become Grade II* listed status, reflecting the importance of the architecture and the history of the campus.
  In 1964 Arthur Miller's The Crucible became the first drama production to be staged at UEA with John Rhys Davies (later to appear in The Lord of the Rings trilogy), the drama society's first president. In the same decade, in 1965, Benjamin Britten was appointed music adviser for UEA. In 1967 he conducted the UEA Choir in a performance of his War Requiem. In 1968 there were two royal visits from Princess Margaret and the Queen who each came to tour the new university for the first time.
caption: Denys Lasdun's Ziggurats accommodation
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