page_title: Swansea University
section_title: Foundations
hierarchical_section_title: Swansea University / History / Foundations
caption_attribution_description: A view of a large mansion with sheep grazing in th foreground.
context_page_description: Swansea University is a public research university located in Swansea, Wales, United Kingdom. It was chartered as University College of Swansea in 1920, as the fourth college of the University of Wales. In 1996, it changed its name to the University of Wales Swansea following structural changes within the University of Wales. The title of Swansea University was formally adopted on 1 September 2007 when the University of Wales became a non-membership confederal institution and the former members became universities in their own right.
  Swansea University has 8 colleges spread across its two campuses which are located on the coastline of Swansea Bay. The Singleton Park Campus is set in the grounds of Singleton Park to the west of Swansea city centre. The £450 million Bay Campus, which opened in September 2015, is located adjacent to Jersey Marine Beach to the east of Swansea city centre which is in the Neath Port Talbot Area.
  It is the third largest university in Wales in terms of number of students. It currently offers about 330 undergraduate courses and 120 post-graduate courses to 20,620 undergraduate and postgraduate students.
context_section_description: The University College, Swansea, (as it was known then), was established in 1920, opening its doors on 5 October. At the time, it was the youngest of the four colleges of the University of Wales. It was established on the recommendations of a Royal Commission set up in 1916. The college was founded on what were perceived as the needs and the wants of the local area, and Swansea's main industries in particular.
  The Park Campus houses the oldest parts of the university's estate, including Singleton Abbey, a large eighteenth-century mansion which was the ancestral home of the Vivian family, having been bought by the prominent industrialist, John Henry Vivian.
  Swansea University's foundation stone was laid in 1920 by King George V in July 1920, welcoming 89 students, of whom eight were female. Subjects taught from the beginning of the College were the Sciences, Mathematics, Metallurgy and Engineering. The professors were A.R. Richardson (Mathematics), E.J. Evans (Physics), J.E. Coates (Chemistry), A.E. Trueman (Geology), C.A. Edwards (Metallurgy) and F. Bacon (Engineering).
  The university was granted a coat of arms by the College of Heralds in 1921 with the motto Gweddw Crefft Heb Ei Dawn, translated as Technical Skill is Bereft Without Culture.
  Arts subjects were not taught immediately in 1920, but started in the following 'session', 1921–22. The first professors in those initial departments were D. Emrys Evans (Classics), W.D. Thomas (English Language and Literature), Henry Lewis (Welsh), E. Ernest Hughes (History), F.A. Cavenagh (Education) and Mary Williams (French). Williams was the first woman to be appointed to a Chair in the United Kingdom. This met with some reaction from senior men at the College, one of whom she would later marry.
  Saunders Lewis, the well-known Welsh language writer and activist, became a member of staff in 1922 although he ran up against controversy in 1936/37 for trying to set fire to a Royal Air Force bombing school on the Llyn Peninsula. He was tried at the Old Bailey and sent to prison for nine months.
  When Singleton Abbey and its surrounding land was handed to the college in 1923, Arts subjects were moved there from the College's temporary site in Mount Pleasant. Student numbers remained relatively small until the Second World War.
  Swansea acquired departments of Philosophy 1925, German in 1931, economics in 1937, Social Policy in 1947, Political Theory and Government in 1954 – the same year that a civil engineering and a Geography department were added. In 1961 Swansea became a centre for Russian and East European Studies, whilst Italian and Spanish joined the Department of French.
  There were many notable staff members at the University in the period, including the long-serving female professor of Botany, Florence Mockeridge. Another was Professor Glanmor Williams (History) who retired in 1982.  Other well-known staff members were the author of novels such as Lucky Jim and That Uncertain Feeling, Kingsley Amis, who lectured in English in the 1950s and early 1960s; Rush Rhees, an expert on Wittgensteinian philosophy, who was a member of staff from 1940 to 1966; and Kenneth O. Morgan (now Lord Morgan of Aberdyfi) who was a junior history lecturer from 1958 to 1966.
caption: Singleton Abbey
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