Bangor University 1884-2009. David Roberts

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       ‘Little Balliol’Growth and Development, 1893–1927

      Despite trials and tribulations in its early years, the University College of North Wales had created a secure foundation. Around the turn of the century, more of its founding fathers – the first professors – began to move on. Gray, who became a Fellow of the Royal Society (FRS) in 1896, moved to Glasgow three years later to succeed his mentor, Lord Kelvin. Dobbie left in 1903 and was elected FRS the following year; he was knighted in 1915 for his service as Principal of the Government Laboratories. Ballard Mathews left for Cambridge in 1896, and he too became a Fellow of the Royal Society; he later returned to Bangor as an Acting Professor. W. Rhys Roberts, an outstanding scholar, moved to the Chair of Classics at Leeds in 1904.

      Their successors were of similarly high calibre, and were unswervingly loyal to the Bangor cause. In Physics, one of Gray’s own students, Edward Taylor Jones, a native of Denbigh, succeeded him in the Chair. Jones was to serve for 26 years before he then succeeded Gray again at Glasgow. Kennedy Orton, a St Leonards man who originally studied Medicine at Cambridge before turning to Chemistry and gaining a highly-acclaimed Ph.D. from Heidelberg, was to hold the Chair of Chemistry for 27 years. Orton had wide interests, his enthusiasms including music, rocks and birds. P. J. White was appointed to a new Chair in Zoology in 1895, and was in post for 34 years, developing an interest in marine science and at one time attempting to fund a Puffin Island biological station which had been acquired. R. W. Phillips, a product of Coleg Normal and Cambridge became Professor of Botany and occupied the Chair for 29 years. He was a leading scientist who contributed the article on ‘Algae’ in the eleventh edition of The Encyclopaedia Britannica. Thomas Winter, a Yorkshireman, became the first Professor of Agriculture in 1895, remaining in post for 18 years, and under him the department became regarded virtually as ‘the agricultural headquarters of north Wales’.¹

      Thomas Hudson-Williams, born in Caernarfon and educated at Friars School, Bangor, had lectured in French and German before he took up the Chair of Greek in 1904 – a position he held until his retirement in 1940. Osbert Fynes-Clinton became Professor of French in 1904 (modern languages being divided to create departments of French and Romance Languages, and German and Teutonic Philology), holding the Chair until his retirement in 1937. A brilliant linguist, Fynes-Clinton studied the Arfon dialect of Welsh in his spare time and published a book on the subject in 1913.

      One of the most versatile scholars was John Lloyd Williams of Llanrwst, who had been educated at Coleg Normal and became an Assistant Lecturer in Botany in 1897. But he also wrote operettas, and was a much sought-after conductor of choirs and musical adjudicator. His keenest interest was in Welsh folk-songs, and he played a leading role in developing music in Bangor. He moved to Aberystwyth as Professor of Botany in the First World War, and during his career received both a D.Sc. for his work on marine algae and an honorary D.Mus.

      W. Lewis Jones replaced Reichel as Head of English Language and Literature. Another former Friars School pupil, he had worked as a journalist and contributed regularly to the Manchester Guardian after his appointment at Bangor. In 1899, Reichel also gave up the Chair of History, and John Edward Lloyd, the Registrar, became Professor of History for the next 31 years. Lloyd also continued as Registrar until 1920, and in later life would lampoon his role as that of ‘lecturer in the morning, registrar in the afternoon and researcher in the evening’.² For a time he also served as Honorary Librarian (Thomas Shankland was Assistant Librarian). Born in Liverpool, but with family roots in Montgomeryshire, his A History of Wales from the Earliest Times to the Edwardian Conquest (2 vols, 1911) is regarded as a seminal work. He was elected a Fellow of the British Academy in 1930 and was knighted in 1934. Dignified, refined, always correct and formal – he was not one with whom people dared to be too familiar³ – Lloyd was a truly renowned academic who must rank close to Reichel as one of the leaders responsible for the survival and development of the University College of North Wales.

      At the age of 30, John Morris-Jones was elevated to a Chair in Welsh in 1894, the Council paying heed to the welcome growth in the numbers studying Welsh. He was one of Bangor’s academic leaders with genuine star quality. A native of Anglesey, who had graduated in mathematics from Oxford but had read Celtic books and manuscripts at the Bodleian Library, he was to become a poet as well as a major scholar and teacher at Bangor. His translations of 38 poems by Heine had considerable influence, though it was as a scholar of the Welsh language, and particularly Welsh grammar, that he is principally known. His major work, A Welsh Grammar, Historical and Comparative, appeared in 1911. In his early years in Bangor, he lectured through the medium of English, and his first lecture in 1889 attracted six College officers, two students and two strangers.⁴ In some respects he seemed a disappointed man. Yet he was arguably the most inspiring Welsh scholar of his generation and was knighted (and acquired a hyphenated surname) in 1918.

      The Chair of Pure and Applied Mathematics was filled for 30 years from 1896 by one of the most extraordinary academics to have served the University at Bangor: George Hartley Bryan. A formidable mathematician, with a touch of genius, he was to make a striking contribution to modern-day knowledge of aircraft stability and aeroplane design. Bryan had analysed the theory