As the University of Reading approaches its centenary, our beautiful campuses look a little more populated now than they used to. Alumnus Tim Treacher speaks to CONNECTED to share just how much has changed in the six decades since he graduated.
Tim studied Agriculture at Reading between 1958 and 1962, on a brand new course called Agricultural Science, which was a mix of agricultural chemistry, botany and agriculture. He recalls his time here as “a very good time – I really enjoyed it.”
Following graduation Tim went onto have a career focused on researching sheep. He undertook a PhD through the Grasslands Research Institute, in conjunction with the University, and then worked there for 20 years, focusing on nutrition and grazing management of sheep. Tim also worked abroad for 10 years, in a research centre in Syria and universities in Spain, before returning to the UK to retire near his grandchildren.
Now, having revisited Whiteknights Campus for the 2024 Community Festival Alumni Reception, Tim reflects on his time at Reading and how he felt returning to campus six decades later.
Where are the cows?
The first thing Tim noticed was how many more buildings there are on Whiteknights Campus today compared to the ‘50s – and how fewer cows there are.
He recalled:
“Pretty much everything was on London Road Campus when I came to the University. It was just us and the cows up here!
“On Whiteknights Campus the new Faculty of Letters building had just been built. This is now known as the Edith Morley building, although it was much smaller in those days. During my four years in the original Whiteknights Hall the new University Library and Physics buildings were built.
“But during my time here everything I needed was on London Road Campus. Our library was there – in what is now the School of Architecture building – and most of our lectures were in a big theatre called Central Chem, towards the back of the London Road site.
“We also had the Buttery where we could have a dreadful lunch, and we used the Great Hall for our dances.”
Halls in the ‘50s
Tim spent plenty of time on Whiteknights Campus however, as he lived in Whiteknights Hall, which was in two old mansions – today these are called Park House, which is now a restaurant, bar, function rooms and offices, and Blandford Lodge, which today is used as teaching space and offices.
Tim recalled:
“There were only 46 of us in the hall. Some of the rooms were singles and some were shared. We shared baths and lavatories, but nearly all the bedrooms had a wash basin – this was a saving grace in the morning rush to have breakfast and get down the hill to lectures on time.
“We didn’t have any clothes washing facilities, other than a big metal tub which you put on the gas stove and boiled up your clothes. It was all quite primitive compared to these days.
“Both houses had wardens – members of staff who lived there – but they pretty much kept to themselves. The only rule really was that you couldn’t make too much noise. In theory female students had to be out by around 10pm, but it wasn’t enforced. I remember one term, a chap’s sister and her friend came to visit for a week. I don’t know how they got around the cleaners but they weren’t sussed out!
“Those were the days of letters, long before mobile phones and most students were pretty bad at writing home. There was a single telephone box in Whiteknights Hall, just beside the common room and the dining room. You had to have your money lined up and feed the coins in. Our parents could also phone into it around the time of formal dinners, when gowns had to be worn – so the phone would ring and whoever was nearby would answer, then they’d need to shout to find the right student.”
Dancing in the fountain
Tim shared that the student social calendar in the 1950s was made up of formal dances and halls bars – with not a club in sight.
He said: “I was on the Amusement Committee, which organised the dances, and was Chairman in my third year. There were two very big dances each year, one at the end of Christmas term and one at the end of the summer term – called the Union Ball and the Vice-Chancellor’s Ball. These were bow-tie affairs, very formal with dance bands and ballroom dancing.
“We would decorate and transform the Great Hall to a theme, with help from students in the Art Department. They would get rolls of newsprint from the local newspaper press and stick these together in great big sheets and transform the whole space into the theme.
“One summer we did a Southsea Island theme, which included building a shallow lake on the lawn with a fountain – the intention wasn’t for students to go into it but of course they ended up dancing in it!”
Tim recalled: “There was also a dance during freshers’ week and the halls all had their own balls during the year. Jantaculum was another event run by students at Christmas which had a bit of everything in it – short poetry readings, carol singing and Christmas music.
“Most students rarely went into town in those days and there was no clubbing. Most of our socialising happened at the dances, or at the bars in the halls, or we went to the cinema.”
But it was the dances that provided some of Tim’s biggest stand-out memories from his time at Reading. “The dances did give us some funny times,” he said. “I remember one time we needed a second piano and we needed it that day as the tuner was coming. We were in a fix, wondering where to get it from.
“So we took a pick-up truck to St George’s Hall and ‘borrowed’ their piano. If we’d have asked they would’ve said no so we decided to beg forgiveness instead of permission. All hell broke loose when the Warden of St George’s found out and it caused quite a stir at the time. But we got it back in one piece.”
Returning to Reading
With such wonderful memories of his time at Reading, what did Tim make of the campus when he revisited six decades later?
He said: “I greatly enjoyed being a student at Reading and it’s lovely to visit campus all this time later. I can recognise parts of the campus still but so much has changed.
“It was brilliant to have a look around my old Whiteknights Hall, where the Community Festival Alumni Reception was hosted. I would love to come back again and have a look upstairs at our old rooms.
“While I was working at Grasslands I needed to consult someone in the University Statistics Department on a difficult statistical analysis. Strangely enough his office turned out to be my old bedroom in Blandford Lodge! I told him he was sitting where my bed used to be. It was quite surreal.
“It’s nice to know these old mansions have gone on to be reused and not just knocked down. That is really quite nice. It gives a link back into the history of the University, the Reading area and the Palmer family who used to own the land.”
If you’d like to join us for this year’s Community Festival, taking place on Saturday 17 May 2025, you can register your interest here.
