University College Origins The foundation of the University College of North Wales in 1884 was the result of a campaign for better higher education in Wales. and in 1881 it published the Aberdare Report, which recommended the creation of two university colleges in Wales, one in the south and another in the north. At the beginning of 1883, a conference took place at Chester to consider the question of a college for North Wales, and this passed a resolution which created a committee for choosing a location and pursuing the matter. In January,
Lord Penrhyn,
Lord Lieutenant of Caernarvonshire, promised a contribution of £1,000. By May of that year, £6,000 had been raised for establishing such a college, and the British government had promised an annual grant of £4,000 towards its running costs. As it became clear that the planning was likely to succeed, there was intense rivalry among the towns of North Wales over which was to be the home of the new college, and several of them established local committees to pursue their claims.
Bangor,
Caernarfon,
Conwy,
Denbigh,
Rhyl, and
Wrexham were on the shortlist of the General Purposes Committee of the College for North Wales, and in the end Bangor was chosen. The arrangements for the college's future were secured and settled by the General Purposes Committee and the Draft and Charter Committee in the first half of 1884. In May, a report was published which stated that the Penrhyn Arms Hotel, Bangor, had been leased from Lord Penrhyn for twenty years, at a rent of £200 a year, with the option to terminate the lease after seven or fourteen years. Work to adapt the hotel for use by the new college began in June. A College Council was established, chaired by Colonel the Hon. William E. Sackville-West, meeting initially at a hotel in Chester.
Henry Reichel, a 27-year-old
Fellow of
All Souls College, Oxford, was appointed as the college's first Principal, and applications were invited for teaching positions. It was announced that the college would open in the third week in October, and the
Earl of Derby was invited to give an inaugural address. Sackville-West petitioned
Queen Victoria for a
Royal charter of incorporation for the college at Bangor, and it was hoped that this would be considered at a
Privy Council meeting on 21 October. The
first Duke of Westminster, Lord Penrhyn, and others, gave scholarships, and in the second week of September examinations for these took place in several towns. The names of the scholars were announced on 20 September. Three of the six scholarships worth £50 a year each were awarded, and seven out of the eight scholarships worth £30 each. Others wishing to join the college as students were invited to send their names to the Registrar by 4 October, together with a
birth certificate and "a satisfactory testimonial to character". There was a formal opening ceremony at the Penrhyn Arms Hotel, renamed as Penrhyn Hall, on 18 October 1884, and in the event the inaugural address was by the
Earl of Powis, the college's first president. There was then a procession to the college including 3,000 quarrymen, as quarrymen from
Penrhyn Quarry and other quarries had subscribed more than £1,200 for the college.
Early years When the college opened in October 1884 it had just 58 students, who were to receive their degrees from the
University of London. At the outset, it had academic staff teaching Greek, philosophy, mathematics, history, English, physics, and chemistry. It was incorporated by a Royal Charter in 1885.
20th century In 1903, the city of Bangor donated a 10-acre site at Penrallt for a new college building, and funds for it were raised by local people. The new building, now known as
Main Arts, was opened in 1911. During the
Second World War, paintings from national art galleries were stored in the Prichard-Jones Hall at UCNW, to protect them from enemy bombing. They were later moved to slate mines at
Blaenau Ffestiniog. Student protests at UCNW in the 1970s focused mainly on calls to expand the role of the
Welsh language. Radical students would disturb lectures held in English and paint slogans in Welsh on the walls of the Main Building, resulting some suspensions of these activists. In the early 1980s, the
Thatcher government even considered closing down the institution. Around this time consideration began of mergers with two colleges of education in Bangor:
St Mary's College, a college for women studying to become schoolteachers, and the larger and older Normal College. The merger of St Mary's into UCNW was concluded in 1977, but the merger with Normal College fell through in the 1970s and was not completed until 1996. Alongside the eventual merger of Normal College, the North Wales College of Nursing and Midwifery merged with the university in 1992, forming a new Faculty of Health Studies. A year later it also took over the small North Wales College of Radiography.
Independence and development The university made a formal application for degree-awarding powers in 2005. Despite the effective abolition of the federal university system, a research and enterprise partnership with Aberystwyth University was agreed in 2006, with £11 million of funding from the
Higher Education Funding Council for Wales. and the first-ever collaboration between Wales and China to establish a new college, which involved Bangor University and the
Central South University of Forestry and Technology (CSUFT). In 2014, the university secured a £45M loan from the
European Investment Bank, to assist the university in developing its estates strategy. In 2016, the university opened Marine Centre Wales, a £5.5M building on the site of the university's Ocean Sciences campus in Menai Bridge, which was financed as part of the £25 million SEACAMS project, partly funded through the
European Regional Development Fund. In May 2017, Bangor became the fourth Welsh university to review its cost base to make savings of £8.5M. The university responded and introduced several cost-saving measures including a reorganisation of the structure of Colleges and Schools and the introduction of a voluntary severance scheme, and several compulsory redundancies was reduced from the initial estimate of 170. In addressing its financial challenges, Bangor University also reorganised some subject areas in 2017, which involved introducing new ways of coordinating and delivering adult education and part-time degree programmes, continuing to teach archaeology, but discontinuing the single honours course, and working with Grwp Llandrillo Menai to validate the BA Fine Arts degree. Other issues which attracted adverse media comment included the cost overrun and delayed opening of the Pontio Arts and Innovation Centre in 2016, the appointment of Hughes's then wife to a newly created senior management position, the purchase and refurbishment of a house for the vice-chancellor by the university for £750,000, the expenses of some senior staff, and the discrepancy between senior management salaries and remuneration for staff working on zero hour contracts. The university announced Hughes' early resignation in December 2018, after allegations of harassment were made against him by his ex-wife and student protests against staff cuts and the closure of the chemistry department. In June 2019, the university launched a consultation to concentrate its non-residential estate onto a single campus in Bangor (Deiniol Road and College Road sites) and dispose of some major sites (including Normal Site, Dean Street and Fron Heulog), 25 per cent of the estate. February 2020 saw a 14-day strike from staff in response to pay and working conditions. In September 2020, the university announced a new round of cuts to fill a £13M gap in the budget, saying 200 more jobs (including 80 academic posts) were at risk. Another reorganisation of the university's structure of Colleges and Schools was announced as well. Staff passed a motion of no confidence in the university management.
Development of new schools In 2021 the Welsh Government announced plans to expand medical teaching at the university in collaboration with Cardiff University School of Medicine, to establish an independent medical school in North Wales following several years of delivering the franchised C21 North Wales for Cardiff. The independent
North Wales Medical School admitted its first intake of 80 students in September 2024. In 2025, the Albert Guday foundation donated £10.5 million to the university, for the redevelopment of Bangor Business School. It will be used to fund a new premises and the school will be renamed to the Albert Guday Business School. ==Campuses and buildings==