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The University traces its origins to schools and colleges established in the middle of the nineteenth century as a result of the energies and visions of individual educational reformers and philanthropists throughout Devon and Cornwall. A hundred years ago, a large part of the Streatham estate was owned by a millionaire family of former East India Company merchants. Pennsylvania was an exclusive suburb, where  children were discouraged from walking in the streets, and even chased away if they failed to raise their hats to residents. St Germans, now the site of many halls of residence, was a private estate of Victorian family villas guarded by a lodge entrance in St Germans Road. Streatham Farm, now at the heart of the main campus, really was a farm and in the 1820s served teas, junket and Devonshire cream to summer Sunday strollers. St Luke's and Camborne were completely separate establishments.
In North Exeter, the Great Exhibition of 1851 spawned local Schools of Art and Science, which in 1868 were housed in the Albert Memorial Museum. Enthusiasm for extra-mural studies grew and, with support from the University of Cambridge, the college became in 1893 the Exeter Technical and University Extension College. In 1900 its official title was changed to the Royal Albert Memorial College. This in turn became the University College of the South West of England in 1922 and, finally, in 1955, to great rejoicing amongst its students, the College received its Charter as the University of Exeter. Her Majesty the Queen was welcomed to the campus in the following year. The University gradually transferred from its city centre sites to the sparsely developed Streatham estate over a period of fifty years, as land and buildings became available - and the funds to buy them!
 By 1888, Camborne Mining School was formally established - a purpose-built laboratory at Camborne for the use of the pupils of the Miners' Association. Over the next century, it met demands of both local people and mining engineers from all over the world, providing tuition at every level from evening and Saturday classes to, eventually, degrees. In 1993, Camborne merged with the University. During the inter-war years, the University acquired many of the villas surrounding the campuses for student residences. One of the most attractive of these was the seventeenth-century Great Duryard Hall on the fringe of the Streatham campus. It was re-named Thomas Hall after Charles Vivian Thomas, a Cornish solicitor and member of a prominent mining family.
The largest transformation of the University came after the Robbins report on higher education and a massive expansion in access to universities. Between 1963 and 1968, a period when the number of students at Exeter almost doubled, no fewer than ten major buildings were completed on the Streatham estate as well as halls of residence for around 1,000 students. These included homes for the Chemistry and Physics departments, the Newman, Laver and Engineering Buildings and Streatham Court. Queen's Building had been opened for the Arts Faculty in 1959 and the Amory Building, housing Law and Social Sciences, followed in 1974.
 In the 20 years that followed, the University invested heavily in maintaining the high quality living and learning environment that has become its hallmark. £30 million was spent, mainly on new self-catering accommodation for students. Gifts from the Gulf States made it possible to build a new University Library in 1983 and a social and study centre for postgraduate students in 1991, and more recently have allowed for the creation of a new Institute of Arab and Islamic Studies.
In 1995 Her Majesty the Queen, with His Royal Highness the Duke of Edinburgh, returned to the University for its 40th anniversary celebrations. She was able to see at first hand the way in which the University, its staff, students and supporters, had responded to the words of aspiration in her royal charter for 'a university of the highest standing'. This aspiration was much in evidence in 1996 and 1998 when the University received Queen's Anniversary Prizes for research into, respectively diabetes and children's health and exercise. These achievements in the fields of health and medicine will shortly be developed further with the creation of the Peninsula Medical School, a new medical school to be run jointly by the Universities of Exeter and Plymouth and the NHS in the region.
Key Dates
1855 School of Art
1863 School of Science
1893 Exeter Technical and University Extension College
1922 The University College of the South West of England established
1955 University of Exeter founded
1962 Postgraduate Medical School established
1978 Incorporation of St Luke's College of Education
1991 Affiliation of the College of St Mark and St John, Plymouth
1993 Incorporation of Camborne School of Mines
1995 Affiliation of St Loye's School of Health Studies
2000 Peninsula Medical School established, in partnership with the University of Plymouth and the NHS in the region
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