The University of East Anglia, Norwich, Norfolk
Created | Updated Apr 18, 2013
Disclaimer: the Researcher of this piece was an undergraduate at the UEA between 1984 and 1988, and was last resident in Norfolk in 1994. This Researcher is aware the University has expanded massively since his time there, and, among other things, now boasts a School of Medicine which was only very barely there (in the form of postgrad training courses for nurses and GP's)when he graduated.
Therefore a lot of what follows will be personal reminiscence of a time long past, when UEA had no more than 4,000 students, most of whom could be comfortably accomodated on campus1. Where possible this Researcher undertakes to check his memory against current fact, but please be aware that some out-of-date information may creep in at the edges. Thank you!
In fact, even as this Guide Entry was being written, this Researcher was contacted for the first time in nearly twenty years by the UEA Alumni Association who very kindly enclosed a copy of their magazine "Ziggurat", a cunningly worded invitation to renew contact with the university, and a not-so-subtly worded invitation to consider giving lots of money to the university, now I've graduated and settled down into a fulfilling career2.
This Researcher is now aware he has a lot to catch up on.
What is there to say about UEA: for this Researcher, a time of vivid and intense memories, one or two of which were actually quite good.
About British Universities
These now come in four varieties.
There are the glittering spires, the soaring Gothic architecture, the time-worn customs, the hallowed old-boy networks, the limp-wristed luvvies and the Russian spies, of Oxford and Cambridge.
Then there are the younger and more sedate Redbrick institutions, once young upstarts in the trade, now old enough to be settling into a sedate academic middle age. Think Manchester, Sheffield, et c.
Leaping to the newest and fourth category, there are now the old polytechnics, and some institutions which weren't even polys, which are now chartered to describe themselves as universities. For instance, the former tech college in Wrexham, Flintshire, which this author once attended, now proudly describes itself as "affiliated to the University of Wales". (The very idea of "University of Wales, Wrexham", to those who know Aston Tech 3, especially if they've been to Bangor or Aberystwyth or Lampeter, would make the mind perform many boggles, but there it is, seemingly. However, this is for the Guide article on Flintshire, as a concept to be explored further)
In between "Redbrick" and "Poly with ambitions" lies our third category of university, of which UEA Norwich is an exemplary type.
UEA was part of the 1960's expansion of higher education, in which a Labour government had the inspirational idea, and backed it with adequate funding, to build new universities from scratch, rather than the recent cheap solution of just encouraging polytechnics to change name.
Even so, UEA gives a kind of corporate impression of aspiring to be a redbrick but not nearly having had enough in the budget to actually buy all that many bricks.
Instead, several million of the finest grey concrete breezeblocks were piled in a field at Earlham and an architect was given the challenge of "Make a uni out of that lot, could you?"
Joking apart, everyone who has attended UEA will nod appreciatively and admit that the architect did a fine job with the materials available.
Let us commence our quick tour of the premises, as the author remembers them from the middle eighties (when he was a student) and the very early nineties (when he last visited). If anything appearing here is out of date, please use the conversation thread below to advise correction!
UEA prides itself on being an open campus. There are quite a few official and unoffical/unorthodox ways to get in and out, but this entry will just cover two. For car drivers and people travelling by bus, there is the long straight drive leading off Earlham Road which leads you to (a)car parking facilities where the universal rule of "there is always less available space than the number of cars seeking to fill it" applies, or else (b) the famous "bus turnaround" in the lee of the Lower Common Room.This is where many generations of undergrads have jostled for space on buses to the city of Norwich and Fifer's Lane.
The alternative way is where our tour begins, on Bluebell Lane just to the east of the campus. This is the cyclist's route in. After turning off Earlham Road onto the wide leafy avenue, the visitor enters UEA by a gate just behind the residence blocks of Orwell and Wolfson Close. These resemble futuristic stacks of Lego bricks, (if Lego made bricks in battleship grey)and are residences reserved for final-year students. Passing through these blocks, the vista opens out with open sports fields on the left, and the imposing grey wall of Waveney Terrace4 on the right. This residence block dispenses with clever constructional principles or architectural conceits, and is an example of WYSIWYG building, housing a thousand students as cheaply and in as utilitarian a manner as possible.
The "Swedish Open Prison" of Waveney Terrace feels like it goes on for ever, although this is possibly a carefully contrived optical illusion.
However, you soon arrive at the Bus Turnaround, which heralds the beginning of the university proper. Unversity Square is a kind of natural ampitheatre with an artifical "brook" descending one side and decanting water into a bubbling fountain in the middle.This fountain, incidentally, is the regular target of people whose sense of humour is seriously challenged, or else are the Rugby Club, who think it can be much improved by the novel addition of washing-up liquid to foam it up a bit. Be kind to such people. On your left: the Students' Union and LCR. In front of you: Billings' Refectory, where generations of students have eaten barely adequate food, with the big square box of the Library behind and to the left. To your right: that octagonal building looking like a WW2 pillbox is the multi(Christian)- faith Chaplaincy, and the great grey five-floor building looming up behind and stretching into the far distance is the Teaching Wall. Let us walk its length.
While the dominant colour is of course grey, each School of Study at UEA has its own historically assigned colourcode.
Each school also has its own three-letter acronym, which makes UEA-speak a confusing jargon to the uninitiated outsider. English and American Studies is also known as EAS (pronounced "ee - ay -ess") and is blessed with strawberry red as its "house colour". the Department of History and European Studies is EUR ("ee-you-are") and has a dark blue verging on purple. BIO5 , as might be expected, has a phosgene-gas pale green colour in keeping with its speciality.
Everything is colour-accessorised, right down to carpets and furnishing fabrics, according to which department you're in: this is a great help to people navigating the mysteries of the teaching wall from the inside.
Following the teaching wall as it grinds remorselessly on, we come to SYS ("Siss" - computer geeks) who are the first detached school of study, occupying seperate premises immediately opposite. The visitor is now on a walkway above the university's service area, with the Teaching Wall on the right moving down through the sciences with CHE ("kay" - Chemistry) and MAP (Maths and Physics). On your left, immediately oposite the Wall, are two of the more desireable residence blocks, Norfolk and Suffolk Terraces. These are built as step pyramids on the Aztec model, although no grisly blood sacrifice takes place on the top. (Not unless medical students, who arrived long after the Researcher's time there time, get VERY drunk). The penthouse flats atop each ziggurat are technically reserved for mature/overseas students with families, or failing that, for people given "grace and favour" accomodation by the uni, for whatever reason.
As the teaching wall finally peters out, the vista opens into more green fields with, on the left, the expanse of University Broad. despite its name, this is not a part of the broads system: this is a lake caused by the filling up of an old digging site. Students are cautioned not to swim here because of tricky rip-tides and undertows. Not that this prevents the odd drunken skinny-dipper...
On the right, the visitor sees what looks, in the distance, like a solitary nuclear bunker, gleaming aluminium in the hazy sunlight. This is the Sainsbury Centre For Visual Arts, the University's art gallery and the last of its on-campus schools of study, AHM (opinions differ as to pronunciation: "ahm", "ohm", "ahem" or "a pretentious bunch of chinless public school gits with double-barrelled names, living it up on Mummy and Daddy's money for three years")
The "Aircraft Hangar" houses the School of Fine Art and Art Appreciation, who are without doubt worthy and scholarly souls devoted to the academic and aesthetic study of fine arts down the centuries and who spend time in quiet contemplation of the artistic aesthetic.
Confusingly, the other half of AHM (Art History and Music)is situated at the very other end of the University: Music students have their own sound-proofed recording studios and rehearsal rooms right at the end of The Street, the university's main shopping area. This leads off University Square in between the Student Union and the Library, and boasts all the big banks, newsagent/stationers, University bookshop, supermarket, and laundrette.
The School of Law (LAW, pron. "We Want Big Salaries when we Graduate") is based in the grand surroundings of the Georgian Earlham Hall , which is off-campus.
Two other Schools deserve mention: Education and Climate Studies are based in seperate premises on the far side of the Wall. Climate Studies is a world-renowned authority on the threat of Global Warming and much of the evidence for this having happened, as well as some of the gloomiest disaster scenarios, have been originated here in the heart of Norwich. Curiously, despite the diaster scenario that predicts most of Norfolk could become the next Atlantis and sink underneath the waves owing to rising sea levels and geological activity provoked as a result of the polar ice cap melting, they seem quite happy to remain at Ground Zero and have, thus far, not published their evacuation plan.Look on them as the canary in the coalmine: the moment Climactic Studies moves, really, really quickly to the University of the Central Cairngorms, then you will know the time of Inundation is at hand.
Via the Students' Union, the UEA sponsors two national award-winners: the student newspaper, "Breezeblock", is regularly voted Best Student Newspaper on Britain and is very rarely outside the top three. "Breezeblock" - now called "Concrete" - has kick-started many a career in print or broadcast journalism. Similarly, the student TV service, called "Nexus" in the eighties, has also won awards and has similarly launched many a career with the BBC.
Famous, semi-famous or just notorious UEA alumni:-
Dr Ian Gibson
Former lecturer, now MP for Norwich North and a Labour spokeswonk on the environment.
Kasio Ishiguro
Booker Prize winner for "The Remains Of The Day" and product of the Creative Writing course. This Researcher shared a classroom with him and remembers him as the quiet attentive Japanese bloke who was diligent about studying structural and comparative linguistics in a way the Researcher was not.
Malcolm Bradbury
Renowned lecturer, serial shagger of female students, and originator of the Creative Writing course.
A UEA joke ran: Q:- What's the difference between God and Malcolm Bradbury?
A:- God is here but everywhere. Bradbury is everywhere but here!
This is believed to have been a reference to the University's generous attitude towards "study leave" for its most prized academic asset.
as for the serial shagging, a recipient of Bradbury's favours was heard complaining that lung cancer could now be considered a sexually transmissible disease, judging from the amount of stale pipe smoke she'd been forced to breathe in during the act.
Bradbury, btw, is now deceased and unable to sue for libel. he was also the model for "The History Man" in David Lodge's novel and the subsequent TV series. (Lodge, incidentally, is another UEA graduate)
Rose Tremaine
Eminent authoress and product of the famed Creative Writing course. This Researcher recalls her as the quiet, serene, strikingly attractive, lady, who attended Mass at the university chaplaincy on a Sunday evening, would sit discreetly at the back, and who would slip away quietly and privately at the end, without stopping to say hello. Received opinion was of a very self-contained private lady.
Rowan Pelling
The editress of the "Erotic Review" who was definitely at UEA, perhaps for a postgrad course, in 1985-86. This researcher remembers speaking to her in the bar at Fifer's Lane sometime in October 1985, although she probably won't remember him.
Selina Scott
The Breakfast Television woman and newscaster thought to have been the real-life model for "Sally Smedley" in "Drop The Dead Donkey". Graduated in the very early 1970's.
Dr. Huda Salih Mahdi Ammash
The "Iraqi Weapons of Mass-Destruction Woman" known as Mrs Anthrax, who was a postgraduate student at the School of Biological Sciences in the 1990's. She spent her time at UEA with her head down, generally over a microscope and a slide full of Anthrax bugs. She came to prominence in 2003 with the American invasion of Iraq and escaped to Syria. She was assigned the Five of Hearts in the American "Most Wanted" pack of cards issued to all troops, and was arrested when the Syrians refused to give her asylum. She ranked no53 on America's "most wanted" list; it is not known whether the Alumni Association currently sends a copy of "Ziggurat" to her prison cell.
Mark Seddon
Former President of the Student's Union and involved in some very acrimonious student politics in 1984-86. Now writes for the serious papers on politics and is, or was, a member of the Labour Party's ruling National Executive and an off-message thorn in Blair's side. Received opinion differed on Mark: depending on who was speaking, he was either a passionately commited political animal with just enough of a bastard in him to survive the cut-throat world of student politics, or he was just a bastard and an opportunist chancer. This Researcher leans towards the first proposition.
Douglas Carswell
Currently the MP for Harwich and Clacton.
Arthur Smith
Comedian and radio presenter, responsible for drunken stunts like persuading his best mate to hitch-hike around Ireland with a fridge, or to track down and beat at tennis every member of the Moldovian national football team. Graduated 1973.
Iain Dale
Notorious bloggist and owner of the Westminster bookshop Politico's. Remembered as a public-school educated Thatcherist Rottweiler, and an active Tory who was mind-bogglingly ill-informed about how the rest of us lived... maybe he's mellowed out since, although this is to be doubted.Think of Boris Johnson without the loveable charm.
Touchingly, Iain, in the foreword to his biography of Margaret Thatcher, dismisses UEA as a "very left-wing university" (although anything to the left of Ghenhiz Khan would have been a Trot to you, eh, Iain?) and remarks about his pivotal role in establishing a Conservative Students Group there. We hardly noticed, mate... less members than the WRP, we recall!
This is based on how in was circa 1990: if anyone knows better, please contact the Researcher! Who knows other exotic names such as "MTH" and "FTV" have joined the UEA-acronym list, but apart from being able to make a feeble stab at "Film and Television" for FTV, doesn't have the faintest bloody idea. Then again, a lot of his university contemporaries are likely to grin at this and say "Oh, him? So what else is new, then?"
For any UEA grad wishing to get back in touch with their alma mater, or to find a "nexus" where old friends can be contacted, try
>UEA Alumni Association
One day this Researcher may start a UEA Low Flyers Association, for those of us who unnaccountably failed to get six-figure salaries and glamorous careers, and who consequently feel ever so slightly intimidated by all the boastful success stories appearing in "Ziggurat"...
Thanking you all
"AgProv" (EAS, 1984 - 88)
1 Or were housed across town at Fifer's Lane, in ex-RAF accomodation next door to "Norwich International Airport". Fifer's Lane deserves a Guide entry all to itself, but this Reesearcher fondly remembers the Bonfire Night party where Air Traffic Control at the airport had to beg the students to stop letting off fireworks, as so many small moving things so close to its radar was making them confused. Within five minutes, the residual RAF presence operating its radar also, quite politely, requested that its student neighbours should cease and desist from letting off rockets, as a large part of Britain's air defences operating from Norwich was about to crash, leaving the East Coast dangerously unguarded... ah, great days 2 Hah! Shows how much they know... 3 From the author's point of view, the fact his old tech college now calls itself a university looks better on his CV and job apps! 4 Although at the time of writing, disturbing news has emerged that Waveney has reached the end of its useful life, and is currently being demolished. For so many UEA grads, including the author, the end of an era.... 5 An embarrasment to the University is that the School of Biological Sciences trained up at least one Iraqi scientist, who later ended up on the Most Wanted pack of cards for her part in refining interesting nerve gases. But you'll find nobody wants to talk about this very much. well, UEA prides itself on equal opportunities... why can't a woman be a war criminal if she so wishes?This is entirely in keeping with the opinions expressed and agitated for by generations of highly vocal UEA feminists, and it is deeply cheering to see a woman achieve renown in a previously all-male field of human endeavour...
