De Montfort University began life as a simple idea, “to afford authoritative instruction in art to the people of Leicester”. By March 1870, the first classes were held in a former warehouse. Men and women from the gentry were taught during the day, while workers came to evening classes.
Over the years DMU has had many different incarnations – as the Leicester School of Art, Leicester Polytechnic, Leicester College of Art and Leicester College of Technology, but we have never lost our pride in being part of the vibrant city of Leicester.
The Special Collections Team have been contributing to the university-wide celebrations as well as producing our own resources to highlight the history of the institution. You can read about the history of the university on this page, as well as checking our main 150th microsite: DMU at 150
At a public meeting in October 1869 a ‘considerable number of ladies and gentlemen’ decided to organise a school which ‘would be able to afford authoritative instruction in art to the people of Leicester’. From there, premises were secured in an old warehouse and in March 1870 the first classes of the Leicester School of Art were held.
Meanwhile, the Reverend James Went began teaching a series of technical classes at the nearby Wyggeston Grammar School for Boys. The demand for lessons was so high that the Leicester Technical School was created in 1882.
The Leicester Municipal Technical and Art School was then formed in 1897, when the Leicester School of Art was merged with the Leicester Technical School, under the control of the town council. Construction began in the Newarke on what we now call the Hawthorn Building. Initially, only the wing facing the Hugh Aston Building was completed. The other parts were added later, with the Richmond Street wing built in 1909, the Gateway Street wing in 1928, and the wing facing Trinity House in 1937.
During the final build, two arches from the 14th century Church of the Annunciation were found embedded into the walls of a cellar. They were preserved and later incorporated into DMU’s Heritage Centre.
On the outbreak of the World War I in 1914, the school was eager to play its part in assisting the war effort. A munitions workshop was started by engineering staff and a programme of classes was created for servicemen who had been impaired by their injuries, allowing them to retrain in a more suitable trade. Many brave staff and students volunteered to serve in the armed forces, and sadly at least 20 lost their lives.
In 1929, the school was rebranded as the Leicester College of Arts and Crafts and the Leicester College of Technology. The Leicester College of Arts and Crafts taught architecture, building crafts, furniture making, printing, book production, metalworking, dress design, weaving, drawing and painting. Meanwhile, the Leicester College of Technology offered education in boot and shoe manufacture, hosiery and textiles, chemistry, dyeing, pharmacy, physics, mathematics, engineering, office management, and trades such as grocery, butchery, bakery and confectionery. The emphasis in both colleges was on vocation, practical skills and employability.
During World War II, life at the colleges was disrupted. Sandbags piled up around the ground floor and gas masks were carried at all times. Short courses in key skills were offered for members of the forces and for women entering munitions factories. Students made furnishings and equipment for hospitals, painted murals in restaurants and air raid shelters, and made posters and signs for the local civil defence committee. After the war it was revealed that the college had been a top-secret radar training station.
The campus changed considerably in the 1960s and 70s. The now bygone Fletcher Building – which has since been redeveloped to create the Vijay Patel Building – was opened by Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth the Queen Mother in 1966. This was the first custom-built extension to the colleges and was essential due to the lack of available space in the Hawthorn Building. A few years later, the James Went Building was added, known informally as the barcode building because of its unusual windows. The building was demolished in 2004 to make way for the Hugh Aston Building and the landscaping of The Magazine.
The Leicester Colleges of Art and Technology were formally designated as the City of Leicester Polytechnic in April 1969, and expanded greatly during the period following. A new building was added on campus when a former hosiery factory was converted into the Clephan Building, while a merger with the City of Leicester College of Education brought new subjects to the curriculum, including teacher training, speech therapy, performing arts and social studies. There was also the creation of a new Leicester campus based at the 18th century manor house Scraptoft Hall.
Leicester Polytechnic officially became De Montfort University Leicester (DMU) on 26 June 1992. Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II launched a new campus for the university at Milton Keynes in March 1992, and in 1994 two further campuses were opened in Lincoln and Bedford. The aim of this was to create a ‘distributed campus’ – a university made up of a network of campuses, each with its own identity and specialisms, but managed as a single corporation sharing technology, systems and skills. By the end of the 1990s, DMU boasted more than 30,000 students across the four sites.
In December 1993, the Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II opened a new building on the Leicester campus named in her honour. Housing the School of Engineering and Manufacture, the Queen’s Building was considered innovative in its approach to environmental issues and was awarded the first ever Energy Design Award by the Department of Energy.
The Charles Frears campus was formed in 1995, following a merger with Charles Frears College of Nursing and Midwifery. With the Scraptoft campus, this saw DMU extended across three Leicester sites as well as the three national campuses.
Many changes have taken place at DMU since the turn of the century, including consolidation of all teaching onto the original central Leicester campus. Courses and facilities at Lincoln, Bedford and Milton Keynes were transferred to local institutions, while the Scraptoft and Charles Frears campuses were sold.
Recent years have seen the opening of significant new buildings that enhance DMU’s modern, state-of-the-art facilities, including the Campus Centre, the PACE building and the Hugh Aston Building. A total of £185.2 million has been invested in developing DMU’s campus of the future, the centrepiece of which is the towering Vijay Patel Building, which houses the art and design subjects.
DMU, now in its 150th year, has grown into the inclusive, diverse, and global institution seen today - with 26,000 students, 2,600 staff, and friends, partners and positive influence across the world.
What prompted the people of Leicester to start an art school on that evening in October 1869? See below for DMU’s ‘origin story’ as told by archivist Katharine Short…
In 1869 the national Art Journal was moved to remark on the recent foundation of the Leicester School of Art: “we only wonder such an institution was not founded long ago.” Leicester finally had an art school, one that in time would expand, merge, and develop into the Leicester Colleges of Art and Technology, Leicester Polytechnic, and finally De Montfort University.
Education for designers was a long-standing national concern. In the 1830s a government select committee investigated the preference of the British public for imported goods and found simply that foreign–made items were more attractive in design and decoration. In 1835 a School of Design was founded in London to train teachers in a National Course of Instruction. Provincial towns were encouraged to start schools of art that would teach this syllabus, which comprised 23 stages from basic linear drawing through to the highest arts of figure painting. Every student was to be taught the same thing in the same way, and the programme was centrally organised by the Department of Science and Art based in South Kensington who examined work and distributed grants. Several towns were keen to establish their art schools: Manchester in 1838, Birmingham in 1842, Nottingham, Coventry and Sheffield in 1843.
There were several attempts to get a school started in Leicester and various short–lived art classes but local conditions were not favourable. Locally there was considerable poverty due to the main industry of hosiery manufacture going through periods of stagnation, so there was little income to spend on classes. At this date the hosiery trade comprised small and competitive workshops and employers did not support art classes as they did not like the idea of their workers sharing trade secrets. There was also a prevalent opinion that hosiery manufacture did not need decorative skill and thus there was no need to train designers.
In 1862 a newcomer to Leicester wrote of the “stigma which rests upon Leicestershire as being the only county which contains in it no school of this character” (Nottinghamshire Guardian, 18 March 1862). However, as the 1860s progressed conditions in Leicester significantly changed for the better. Increased prosperity came from the growth of the boot and shoe trade which was more stable than hosiery, as well as the spread of railways. Improved sanitation and water supply had increased the population of the town and given them better health. In this atmosphere the well-off middle classes turned to the foundation of cultural institutions that reflected their new sense of civic pride, including the museum, library and Literary and Philosophical Society. Indeed, when a group of locals came together at a public meeting on October 14 1869 to open the art school debate again, there were few manufacturers among them, and few arguments that such a school would improve local industry. While there were people present who did think that there was “plenty of scope for design” among the trades of the town, this does not appear to be the primary concern of the founders of the School. Mayor John Baines began proceedings by emphasising that there was necessity for a school of design in a town of 90,000 inhabitants, when other, smaller towns already had one. This ‘necessity’ came more from a sense of Leicester’s status among rival towns than the need to train its artisans.
While some attendees at the meeting were worried about Leicester not ‘keeping up with the Joneses’, others had more moralising reasons to support the school. Having access to artistic education would help to show people, “even the poor“, good taste and encourage them to ”love for things beautiful in art“. Another opinion echoed this: “there is no doubt it would improve their tastes and habits… which would continue to exercise a widespread and beneficial influence on society“ (Leicester Chronicle, 16 Oct 1869 and 26 Feb 1870). This equation of an appreciation of beauty with a positive moral benefit is a typical attitude of the Victorian middle classes, neglecting to account for lack of basic elementary education, the exhaustion of long days of manual work and the other grinding effects of poverty. Edward Shipley Ellis, chair of Midland Railways, took this view further by lamenting “the money spent in the 500 public-houses in Leicester… what they wanted was to induce the young people to leave these places and spend their time in schools“ (Leicester Chronicle, 16 Oct 1870).
The motion to start the School was passed, gentlemen were named to sit on the managing committee and £262 was raised towards the initial work of finding premises and hiring a headmaster. Reflecting the varied reasons behind the formation of the school, the managing committee did not include many representatives from the manufacturing industries who were supposed to benefit from the School’s training of designers. Instead there were a typical mix of Leicester’s moneyed middle-class: artists (including John Fulleylove), solicitors, doctors and bankers. Only two were hosiers and one was in the boot and shoe trade. These gentlemen quickly secured a disused warehouse on Pocklington’s Walk and began the process of fitting it out. They advertised for a master and interviewed 14 men before choosing Wilmot Pilsbury (below), an artist who had trained in teaching the National Course of Instruction.
Doors opened for lessons on 1 March 1870. Classes were held in the daytime for ladies and students from private schools. These lessons cost twice as much as the evening classes for male and female artizans which included elementary and advanced art as well as a focus on mechanical and architectural drawing. The first annual report summarizes the early success enjoyed by the School. 269 students attended classes, above the national average. Of these 92 were put forward for national exams and 42 passed, including 14 marked excellent. The prizes awarded to excellent students included books, watercolour sets and mathematical instruments.
Initially the School of Art did not assist the artizan class in Leicester as much as had been hoped. This was due to the restrictive nature of the National Course of Instruction, which focused on drawing skills and would not allow those skills to be modelled in 3D, something that would be more useful to a designer needing to see how their pattern looked when applied to an object. Rather it was science and technical subjects that were in demand due to rapid advancements in industrial technology. Workers often knew nothing of the theories and principles that underpinned the machinery they were expected to use, and this put them at a disadvantage. After 1870, when compulsory elementary education was established for children between 5 and 12 years old, science evening classes became popular in Leicester although provision was voluntary or charitable.
In 1873 the Reverend James Went added science classes to the traditional classical curriculum at the Wyggeston Boy’s School, where he was headmaster, and provided scholarships for 10 working class boys to attend. These classes developed into a separate department focusing on technical and commercial subjects such as engineering, building and mechanical drawing. The Leicester Chamber of Commerce appealed for local industry to offer support, stating: “the importance of this instruction, as tending to obtain both superior workmanship, and also economy of time and labour, must be obvious to everyone”.
In November 1884 a new wing of the Boy’s School was opened specifically to house the science classes. Named the Ellis Memorial Technical School, after Edward Shipley Ellis who had donated a large sum to the work but had passed away before completion, it included a spacious chemical laboratory, a lecture room for 70 students equipped with a screen for projection of photographic diagrams, and a physics laboratory holding electrical machines and batteries to demonstrate the sciences of mechanics, optics, heat and magnetism. During the day the labs were used by boys at the school, but in the evening affordable classes were held for those wishing to improve their understanding of the theory behind their practical training at the workshop or factory. In time commercial subjects were added, as expanding industries required a steady supply of clerks and accountants.
The School of Art was proving successful with a focus on fine art subjects and some expansion into applied design, women’s crafts and building construction subjects. It usually placed in the top 5 schools in the country at the national exams. Yet it struggled to maintain itself financially and relied on handouts from the Council. The Pocklington’s Walk premises had swiftly proved inadequate and the School moved to an annexe of the New Walk Museum, but this too was crowded and unsuitable. Meanwhile the Technical School was also experiencing financial difficulty and was oversubscribed, with 1,186 evening students in attendance. There was much local debate over how to proceed, with some arguing that the two schools should be merged only to find they could not agree on where they should be based or who should be in charge, as neither institution wished to give up its independence or be subsumed into the other.
Finally, the Council stepped in and purchased a plot of land on the Newarke, in fact, the house and gardens formerly belonging to Edward Shipley Ellis. With the Art School already using the Ellis house for lessons, work began on constructing a building for both Schools – now the Hawthorn Building of DMU. Opened in 1897, the Leicester Municipal Technical and Art School was now managed by the Town Council’s Education Committee. The Art School headmaster, Augustus Spencer, acted as joint head for a few years, with James Went providing guidance and advice. When Spencer left in 1900 two separate headmasters were appointed: Benjamin Fletcher for the Art School and John Hawthorn for the Technical School (the building is now named after him). The institution continued to run with shared administration and buildings but two principals managing separate technical and art sections until they were united under one Director in 1969 as the City of Leicester Polytechnic.
Image above: the Hawthorn Building in 1926, showing three completed sections with the old Shipley Ellis house in the middle.
DMU’s lion logo has a long history and originates with the City of Leicester coat of arms. As you can see below the City arms have two lions holding up a shield which is decorated with a cinquefoil (a French word meaning ‘5 leaves’). A helmet with decorative mantling sits on top of the shield, crested by a wyvern. Often mistaken for a dragon, the wyvern is similar but only has two legs. The motto ‘semper eadem’ means ‘always the same’.
Below is an example from the 1897 prospectus showing how elements of the City arms were used by DMU’s predecessors.
Leicester Polytechnic was granted its own coat of arms, which still incorporated elements from the old coat of arms including the lion and the cinquefoil. A kestrel was added and the motto changed to ‘excellentia et studium’, meaning ‘excellence and zeal’.
In 1992 it was decided to create a new logo for the De Montfort University, but still maintain continuity with the old coat of arms. Therefore a lion was chosen, with the cinquefoil embedded in his mane. The lion is sometimes mistaken for a griffin, but griffins are beaked like birds.
Elements of the logo are incorporated into DMU’s ceremonial mace and staves, used during graduation ceremonies.
The mace was designed by Nigel Kenwood and made in the silver-working department of the Polytechnic. The ceremonial staves were also designed and made in-house, by Neil Harding.
There were many significant anniversaries during 2018, not least the 100 year anniversaries of the end of the First World War and of the passing of Representation of the People Act allowing (some) women to vote. It has also been 50 years since the assassinations of Martin Luther King Jr and Robert F Kennedy.
For this post I wanted to focus on a different but no less significant milestone: the 1918 Education Act. Known as the Fisher Act, this raised the school leaving age from 12 to 14, abolished fees in state elementary schools, and introduced more special needs education. Most significantly for the history of DMU, it promoted a system of part-time continuation day classes for those aged 14 to 18. This was an early form of secondary technical education, aimed at allowing teenagers who had to enter the workforce to continue with some education, usually relevant to their trade.
At this date, the Leicester Municipal Technical and Art School provided a mixture of day time and evening classes, with the majority of students attending part time. Classes were aimed at all levels and fell into what we would consider a broad range of secondary, further, higher and adult education. LMTAS was exactly the kind of institution which was geared towards the provision of continuation day classes, and in response to the Act the Junior Day Craft Classes and the Junior Technical School were established. The prospectuses provide more detail about the work of the schools:
The 1918 Education Act recognised that young people entering the workforce needed to have the opportunity to learn and improve their skills as much as those fortunate enough to go to a grammar school and undertake a classical education. DMU’s predecessors were focused on providing vocational courses that would benefit the industry of the town, and their junior classes proved to be very successful.
What is a Chancellor?
A Chancellor is a nominated leader and ceremonial head of a university.
The Chancellor has an important ambassadorial role, working with colleagues to represent the institution in the external community. He/she is an advocate of the university working to raise the university’s profile and advance its interests nationally and internationally.
The role of Chancellor is an honorary one, but has great importance and significance; as such the Chancellor needs to share the value and ethos of the university, enhancing the reputation and encouraging their mission.
At DMU the Chancellor is also a member of the Board of Governors and works closely with the Senior Executive Board in developing the strategic direction of the institution and overseeing its financial health.
DMU Summer Graduations Tuesday 14.30 where Lord Waheed Alli, Chancellor of De Montfort University, was bestowed the title of Companionship
The Role of Chancellor at DMU
When Leicester Polytechnic became De Montfort University in June 1992, it was decided that the institution would apply ‘the language of the profession, nationally and internationally, to the roles of the senior staff.’
The Polytechnic was historically managed by a Director and the Board of Governors. However, the new university followed the common practice of many other universities by establishing a management structure of Chancellor, Vice-Chancellor, Pro-Chancellors, Pro-Vice Chancellors and the Chief Executive. Continuity was maintained by keeping the personnel in similar roles.
Kenneth Barker, Director of the Polytechnic, became the first Vice Chancellor and Dame Anne Mueller, a member of the Polytechnic Board of Governors, was appointed DMU’s first Chancellor.
1992-1995: Dame Anne Mueller
1995-1998: Sir Clive Whitmore
1998-2000: Dr John (Granville) White
2000-2006: Baroness Usha Prashar
2006-2016: Lord Waheed Alli
2016-2020: Baroness Lawrence of Clarendon OBE
Dame Anne Mueller (1930-2000)
Dame Anne was born in Bombay to a German businessman father and English mother who had met and married in India. After the onset of the Second World War, Anne’s and her mother returned to England.
A scholarship took her to Somerville College, Oxford, where she read philosophy, politics and economics, then entered the Civil Service in 1953. She held many senior appointments and was considered the most successful woman civil servant of her generation.
She retired in 1990. Dame Anne devoted a great deal of her time to higher education, in which she was passionately interested, and was appointed as an independent governor of Leicester Polytechnic in 1988. In June 1991 she became the first Chancellor of the new De Montfort University. Dame Anne died in 2000, aged 69, of Parkinson’s disease. In an obituary in the DMU Newsletter, VC Philip Tasker described her as ‘a remarkable, wonderful woman’ whose contribution was ‘pivotal in the university’s success in the early, challenging years following its incorporation.’
Sir Clive Whitmore
Sir Clive attended Christ’s College, Cambridge, studying Modern Languages before joining the Civil Service, working at the Ministry of Defence.
He became Under Secretary to the Cabinet Office in 1977 and served as Principal Private Secretary to the Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher from 1979-1982. In 1983 he returned to the Ministry of Defence as Permanent Under Secretary of State before moving to the same position at the Home Office.
He retired in 1994. In 1992 he worked as a visiting professor of Public Policy and Managerial Studies at DMU. In March 1993 he became an independent member of the governing body and was invited to become Chancellor in 1995.
Dr John (Granville) White
John White attended Magnus Grammar School in Newark before gaining a management apprenticeship at Boots in Nottingham. While working there he undertook a part time HNC in Business Studies.
He then attended Nottingham University to gain a BA in Industrial Economics in 1966. After graduation he joined Staveley Industries, looking at the application of modern marketing to the machine tool industry. John went on to undertake a PhD on this subject at UMIST.
Over the next twenty years he progressed through a series of appointments in major manufacturing companies, culminating in his appointment as Chief Executive of BBA Group. Despite the demands of his career John took time to teach, both at UMIST and at Leicester Polytechnic.
In 1989 he joined the new Board of Governors of Leicester Polytechnic Higher Education Corporation and became the Chair of Governors, successfully helping to steer the institution through a difficult transitional phase. In 1998 he accepted the role of Chancellor and was also awarded an Honorary Doctorate of the University.
Baroness Usha Prashar
Baroness Prashar was born in 1948 in Kenya before moving to Yorkshire with her family in the 1960s.
She read Politics at Leeds University and Social Administration at the University of Glasgow. Since the 1970s she has served a variety of public and private sector organisations, including the Runnymede Trust, Policy Studies Institute, National Council for Voluntary Organisations, Parole Board of England and Wales, and the National Literacy Trust.
She was appointed as a Civil Service Commissioner in 1990 and was First Civil Service Commissioner from 2000 to 2005. Baroness Prashar became a Life Peer in 1999 and has also served on the Iraq Enquiry.
She became a Governor of DMU in 1996 before taking the position of Chancellor. Vice-Chancellor Philip Tasker described her as an exceptional Chancellor who brought a wealth of experience from her long and distinguished career in public service to the university.
Lord Waheed Alli
Lord Alli was born in 1964 in London and attended Norbury Manor School. He left school at 16 and became a researcher on a financial services industry magazine. He was later talent spotted by an investment bank and began a career in the City. He left this role to form the television production company 24 Hour Productions, which produced the ground breaking TV programme The Word. In 1992 he co-founded Planet 24 which became the largest independent television production company in the UK; as Managing Director Waheed was responsible for programmes including The Big Breakfast.
Waheed was always interested in politics and has taken on varied public duties including serving on the Executive of the British Youth Council, the Teaching Training Agency and the Creative Industries Taskforce. He is a trustee of the Elton John Aids Foundation and Vice President of UNICEF and joined the Labour Party aged 20. He worked on Tony Blair’s leadership campaign and election campaign and was made a life peer of the Labour party at 34. Since then his work has been focused around gay rights, youth and education.
On his appointment as Chancellor he praised DMU’s commitment to diversity and the way that it fosters creativity and radical, innovative approaches.
Baroness Lawrence of Clarendon OBE
Following her campaign work since the racially motivated murder of her son Stephen in 1993, Doreen Lawrence was awarded the OBE for services to community relations in 2013 and since then she has been made a life peer in the House of Lords.
She has won praise for her tireless dedication to community, anti-racism and other causes close to her heart and she was recently named the most powerful woman in the country by the BBC. Her spirit and resilience and demand for a better way have genuinely impacted the core of British life.
While Chancellor at DMU she deposited her personal archive to Special Collections, which was used as the basis for an exhibition and research centre, the Stephen Lawrence Research Centre.
The First World War and Leicester Municipal Technical and Art School
In 1914 the Leicester Municipal Technical and Art School was based in what is now the Hawthorn Building. At this time it consisted of only two wings, one facing Magazine Square and one along Richmond Street. The school was managed by two Principals, Benjamin Fletcher for the Art School and John Hawthorn for the Technical School. Subjects offered included art and design, boot and shoe manufacture, dress making, carpentry, engineering, pharmacy and architecture.
War conditions had an immediate effect on the schools, from the loss of their playing fields for military training to the scaling back of events like prize-giving ceremonies. The most noticeable effect was on student numbers. Many students or potential students enlisted, while others had to enter employment. As early as October 1914 fewer registrations were noted, and by 1916 it was necessary to close the Engineering Department.
From 1916 applications were received from disabled ex-servicemen who needed to learn a new trade to accommodate their injuries. By October 1917 special classes were established at the Technical School specifically for the disabled. Hand Sewn Boot and Shoe Manufacture was the most popular, although printing, watch repair, cabinet making and carpentry were also offered. At the Art School men took lithography, draughtsmanship, jewellery making and illustrating.
In 1919 the schools found their position reversed as returning servicemen signed up for classes. Evening class applications, for example, jumped from 618 in 1917 to 1321 in 1919.
Maintaining enough staff to carry on the work of the schools was a challenge as both teaching and administrative staff enlisted. The Committee decided to hold open the positions of those staff on active service. After the war ended it took time for staff to return to Leicester – as late as January 1920 the Committee had to write to the Army asking them to release one of their teachers. The war had other impacts too – in February 1920 Mr Langran, one of the administrators, was granted leave to have an operation “in connection with wounds he received in the War”.
War Work
In 1915 the Technical School converted their engineering workshop into a small munitions factory, with the approval of the Ministry of Munitions who asked that they make gauges. Staff were asked to work full time, bringing in students to assist. The work was expanded to include the manufacture of fixtures for gun primers, punches and dies for drawing cartridges, shell bases, screws and pins.
In April 1916 it was decided to rent the workshop to an existing munitions company, although one machine was kept aside for the use of staff and students, as “they desire to do something to help the school and the country”.
Ernest Edward Brooks
Ernest Edward Brooks was a teacher at the Technical School from 1884 until 1936. He was the Second Master of the school and also the Head of the Electrical Engineering Department. In October 1917 the Schools discovered that Brooks was working for the Admiralty on secret research relating to electrical devices for destroying submarines. The Admiralty made a large contribution to his salary and thanked the Committee for his services, “which have been of the greatest assistance in the development of the anti-submarine apparatus.”
Leonard Rowland
Leonard Rowland taught engineering at the Technical School from 1905 to around 1919. During the War he was a stalwart of the munitions workshop, and also undertook a large amount of testing work, particularly on aeroplane parts. Turner and Company used his expertise to improve their manufacture of elastic shock absorbers for aircraft, and showed their appreciation by loaning the school expensive polariscope equipment.
Rowland also used the polariscope to experiment with the testing of screw threads. He presented his work to the Engineering Standards Committee, which gave him a commission to continue the work. It was noted that the Air Board Directorate much appreciated Rowland’s contribution to the war effort.
Roll of Honour
A treasure of the De Montfort University Archive is the Roll of Honour listing 177 staff and students who served during World War One, including 20 who lost their lives. The Roll only lists men from the Art School; we have no corresponding list of men from the Technical School who served. The Roll of Honour was made by arts students as an exercise in printing and design that would commemorate the sacrifice of their classmates.
Walter Anson
Walter was a star pupil of the Art School, where he studied painting and drawing. Between 1911 and 1915 he is frequently mentioned in the local press as a prize winner and scholarship holder. He had been awarded a place at the Slade School of Art in London, and when his drawings featured in a national exhibition they were praised by the art critic of The Observer newspaper. The Midland Free Press wrote in September 1912 that, “there is no doubt he will have a brilliant future”. Walter enlisted at the very start of the War, in August 1914. He first joined the Leicestershire Regiment before moving to the Royal Welsh Fusiliers, where he was a Second Lieutenant. He was killed at Gaza on 8 November 1917, aged 27.
Julian Gould
Julian studied drawing, design and lithography at the Art School around 1907 to 1909, and won a silver medal for his drawing. In 1910 he went to Paris to sketch before returning to the family home in London and working as a graphic designer for a printer.
Julian enlisted out of disgust at the sinking of the passenger ship Lusitania by a German U-boat. He became a Private in the 16th Middlesex Regiment, participating in the Battle of the Somme and acting as Company Machine Gunner. He was killed in action on 31 May 1917 at the age of 25. His grave is unknown and his name is recorded on the Arras Memorial.
Percy Cockayne and Percy Gordon
Cockayne and Gordon were both on the Typography course, part of the Printing Trades Department. They both received commendations for their design work at the 1915 Board of Education National Competition.
Cockayne was a Corporal with the Machine Gun Corps. He died in August 1918 at the age of 20 and is buried at the Heath Cemetery in France.
Gordon joined the Leicestershire Regiment with the rank of Private. He died on 26 March 1916, also at the age of 20, and is buried at Ecoivres Military Cemetery in France and commemorated in Saint Saviour’s Church, Leicester.
The Battle of the Hohenzollern Redoubt
Three School of Art students were killed in action on the same day. Cabinet making student John Mawby and typography students William Henry Grayson and William Davis died on 13 October 1915. The men were in the 1st/4th Leicestershire Regiment, which was part of the 46th North Midland Division.
On 13 October 1915, during the Battle of Loos, the Division undertook the main assault on the Hohenzollern Redoubt, resulting in 3,643 casualties within the first ten minutes of action. The British Official History of the war calls the attack “nothing but the useless slaughter of infantry”.
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