Royal Agricultural University

The Royal Agricultural University was founded as the Royal Agricultural College in 1842,^[5] at a meeting of the Fairford and Cirencester Farmers’ Club. Concerned by the lack of government support for education, Robert Jeffreys-Brown addressed the meeting on "The Advantages of a Specific Education for Agricultural Pursuits".^[6] A prospectus was circulated, a general committee was appointed and Henry Bathurst, 4th Earl Bathurst was elected president. Funds were raised by public subscription: much of the support came from the wealthy landowners and farmers of the day, and there was no government support. Construction of the main building, in Victorian Tudor style, began in April 1845 and was designed by S. W. Daukes and John R. Hamilton, and built by Thomas Bridges of Cirencester.^[7] The first 25 students were admitted to the college in September 1845.

Queen Victoria granted a royal charter to the college in 1845 and sovereigns have been patrons ever since, visiting the college in every reign. King Charles III became president in 1982.

The college gained full university status in 2013 and changed its name accordingly.^[8] It had 1,125 students in the 2019/20 academic year^[1] and saw a 49% rise in applications between 2008 and 2013.^[9] The 2022 National Student Survey (NSS) ranked the RAU 1st for Learning Community (UK Universities) and 4th for Overall Satisfaction (English Universities).^[10]

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Henry Bathurst, 4th Earl Bathurst

Henry Bathurst, 4th Earl Bathurst

Henry George Bathurst, 4th Earl Bathurst, styled as Lord Apsley from 1794 to 1834, was a British peer and Tory politician.

Samuel Daukes

Samuel Daukes

Samuel Whitfield Daukes (1811–1880) was an English architect, based in Gloucester and London.

John R. Hamilton (architect)

John R. Hamilton (architect)

John R. Hamilton was a nineteenth-century English and American architect, active between 1840 and 1870.

Queen Victoria

Queen Victoria

Victoria was Queen of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland from 20 June 1837 until her death in 1901. Her reign of 63 years and 216 days was longer than that of any previous British monarch and is known as the Victorian era. It was a period of industrial, political, scientific, and military change within the United Kingdom, and was marked by a great expansion of the British Empire. In 1876, the British Parliament voted to grant her the additional title of Empress of India.

Royal charter

Royal charter

A royal charter is a formal grant issued by a monarch under royal prerogative as letters patent. Historically, they have been used to promulgate public laws, the most famous example being the English Magna Carta of 1215, but since the 14th century have only been used in place of private acts to grant a right or power to an individual or a body corporate. They were, and are still, used to establish significant organisations such as boroughs, universities and learned societies.

The university operates two farms close to the campus:

• Coates Manor Farm is predominantly arable cropped with some pasture land.
• Fossehill Farm provides polo and hunter livery stabling and associated exercise facilities.

Harnhill Manor Farm was purchased in 2009 and with Coates Manor Farm totals^[11] 491 hectares (1223 acres) of land. The farm was managed organically for many years but all the land apart from the outdoor-pig unit was taken out of organic management. In 2011, an old sheep shed at the front of the farm complex was turned into the 'John Oldacre Rural Innovation Centre' a building designed for the training of students and members of the public in vocational skills such as rough-terrain forklift truck driving, blacksmithing, chainsaw and welding course, etc. The building cost £1.2 Million to transform.^[12] The JORIC was officially opened in March 2014 by Sir John Beddington and the site was visited in November 2013 by Prince Charles.

The university has a range of sports facilities on campus, including a gym, an all-weather pitch, and squash and tennis courts. Students participate in a wide range of sports including; clay pigeon shooting, cricket, equestrian, field sports (hunting, fishing and shooting), football, golf, lacrosse, hockey, netball, polo, rugby, rifle shooting, rowing, tennis and yachting. However, most sports have been banned from BUCS League, and rugby has even been banned on campus. .^[13]

The Royal Agricultural University is just one of three remaining British universities (the others being the University of Cambridge and the University of Oxford) to maintain their own beagle pack. Founded in 1889, the RAU Beagles is run by the students who whip in and hunt the hounds, and until the 2004 hunting ban, hunted hares in the countryside around Cirencester.^[14]

In the Research Excellence Framework (REF) 2021, 52% of the University’s research was classed as 3* or 4* meaning it is world-leading or internationally excellent. In addition, half of the University’s scientific publications were deemed to be of international quality.^[15] In Research England's Knowledge Exchange Framework, the University was grouped into the STEM cluster – small specialist universities in medicine, science, and engineering – ranking second out of the nine institutions in the cluster. The University was recognised as having very high or high engagement in five of the seven criteria on which it was judged.^[16]

The university library holds around 40,000 print volumes, nearly 1,000 current journal subscriptions, more than 40,000 e-books and a growing number of full-text databases.^[17] The main collection is supplemented by a support collection and a historical collection of texts, primarily on agriculture and estate/land management, dating back to the 16th century. The library also holds the RAU archive, a collection of documents relating to the institution since its foundation.

The patron of RAU was until 1982 the current reigning British monarch, at which point King Charles, the then heir apparent to the British throne, and current King of the United Kingdom took on this role.^[18]

• 1845–1901 – Queen Victoria
• 1901–1910 – King Edward VII
• 1910–1936 – King George V
• 1936 – King Edward VIII
• 1936–1952 – King George VI
• 1952–1982 – Queen Elizabeth II
• 1982–present – King Charles III

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Charles III

Charles III

Charles III is King of the United Kingdom and the 14 other Commonwealth realms. He was the longest-serving heir apparent and Prince of Wales, and at the age of 73, became the oldest person to accede to the British throne, upon the death of his mother, Elizabeth II, on 8 September 2022.

Heir apparent

Heir apparent

An heir apparent, often shortened to heir, is a person who is first in an order of succession and cannot be displaced from inheriting by the birth of another person; a person who is first in the order of succession but can be displaced by the birth of a more eligible heir is known as heir presumptive.

Queen Victoria

Queen Victoria

Victoria was Queen of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland from 20 June 1837 until her death in 1901. Her reign of 63 years and 216 days was longer than that of any previous British monarch and is known as the Victorian era. It was a period of industrial, political, scientific, and military change within the United Kingdom, and was marked by a great expansion of the British Empire. In 1876, the British Parliament voted to grant her the additional title of Empress of India.

Staff

• James Buckman – professor of geology, botany, and zoology from 1848 to 1863.
• John D. Custance – professor of agricultural science in the late 1870s, later was responsible for establishing Roseworthy Agricultural College in South Australia.^[19]
• John Scott, on the staff shortly from 1880, later became known as a tractor pioneer.
• Sir Emrys Jones, former chief adviser to the Minister of Agriculture from 1967 to 1973, and director of the Government's Agricultural and Development Advisory Service (ADAS), was principal of the college from 1973 until 1978. He described his time at Cirencester as the most enjoyable period in his life.^[20] In 2011, a new teaching facility at the college was named in his honour.^[21] For university applicants with a connection to Wales, a scholarship has been set up that carries the former principal's name.^[22]
• Edward William Prevost, Professor of Chemistry 1879 to 1881 then retired to be a farmer
• George Stephen West (1876–1919), professor of natural history 1899–1906
• John Wrightson (1840–1916), founder of Downton Agricultural College

Alumni

Royal Agricultural University graduates have won a number of awards and prizes, including the Farmers Weekly Young Farmer Of The Year Award (James Price 2009^[23] and Adrian Ivory 2008^[24]).

Notable students from the institution include:

• 

  James Hamilton, 5th Duke of Abercorn

• 

  UKIP MEP Stuart Agnew

• 

  Conservative MP Richard Benyon

• 

  Irish Cabinet Minister Simon Coveney

• 

  England Rugby player Tim Payne

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James Buckman

James Buckman

James Buckman was a British pharmaceutical chemist, professor, museum curator, botanist, geologist, archaeologist, author and farmer.

John D. Custance

John D. Custance

John Daniel Custance FCS FRAS was an agricultural scientist, founder of Roseworthy College, South Australia, but was sacked by a Minister with whom he had mutual antipathy.

John Scott (agricultural engineer)

John Scott (agricultural engineer)

John Scott (c.1846–1909) was a Scottish consulting agriculturist, agricultural engineer, and pioneer of motorised farming. He is credited with the invention of the tractor power take-off.

Edward William Prevost

Edward William Prevost

Prof Edward William Prevost FRSE FIC (1851–1920) was a 19th-century British chemist, philologist and linguist. In authorship he is known as E. W. Prevost.

George Stephen West

George Stephen West

George Stephen West, ARCS, FLS, was a British botanist, a specialist in phycology and protistology, a botanical illustrator and a writer. With his father. botanist William West, he collaborated on numerous scientific books. West's brother was the botanist William West Jr, who assisted his father with fieldwork.

John Wrightson

John Wrightson

Professor John Wrightson FCS, MRAC was a British agriculturalist and the founder of Downton Agricultural College (1880–1906) at Downton in Wiltshire. In 1890 he reputedly became the first person in Britain to surf, under the guidance of two Hawaiian princes, David Kawānanakoa and Jonah Kūhiō Kalanianaʻole, who were studying at his college.

Farmers Weekly

Farmers Weekly

Farmers Weekly is a magazine aimed at the British farming industry. It provides news; business features; a weekly digest of facts and figures about British, European and world agriculture; and livestock, arable and machinery sections with reports on technical developments, farm sales and analysis of prices.

Dwijendralal Ray

Dwijendralal Ray

Dwijendralal Ray, also known as D. L. Ray, was an Indian poet, playwright, and musician. He was known for his Hindu mythological and nationalist historical plays and songs known as Dwijendrageeti or the Songs of Dwijendralal, which number over 500, create a separate subgenre of Bengali music.

Anstruther-Gough-Calthorpe baronets

Anstruther-Gough-Calthorpe baronets

The Anstruther-Gough-Calthorpe Baronetcy, of Elvetham Hall in Elvetham in the County of Hampshire, is a title in the Baronetage of the United Kingdom.

Derek Barber, Baron Barber of Tewkesbury

Derek Barber, Baron Barber of Tewkesbury

Derek Coates Barber, Baron Barber of Tewkesbury was a British member of the House of Lords. He also served as a senior civil servant and agricultural expert.

Alan Brooke, 3rd Viscount Brookeborough

Alan Brooke, 3rd Viscount Brookeborough

Alan Henry Brooke, 3rd Viscount Brookeborough,, is a Northern Irish peer and landowner. He is one of the 92 hereditary peers who remain in the House of Lords; he sits as a crossbencher. He is the current Lord Lieutenant of Fermanagh.

Jeremy Browne, 11th Marquess of Sligo

Jeremy Browne, 11th Marquess of Sligo

Jeremy Ulick Browne, 11th Marquess of Sligo, styled Earl of Altamont until 1991, was an Irish hereditary peer and businessman. On the death of his father, he was entitled to sit in the House of Lords by virtue of the subsidiary title Baron Mounteagle, in the Peerage of the United Kingdom. However, he never took his seat and lost the right with the passage of the House of Lords Act 1999.