Wills Memorial Building

Wills is one of the last great Gothic structures to be built in England and at 215ft is the third tallest structure in the city.
Designed by Sir George Oatley, it was built as a memorial to Henry Overton Wills, a major University benefactor.
Construction began in 1915 but was halted in 1916 during the First World War. Work restarted in 1919 and the building was officially opened in 1925 by King George V and Queen Mary.
During the Second World War, incendiary bombs damaged the Great Hall, which was restored to Oatley’s original designs in the 1960s when the adjoining wing was also extended.
A further period of restoration in 2006 saw the building re-opened by the last surviving First World War veteran Harry Patch, who had worked as a stonemason on the building in the 1920s and had attended the original opening.
The Great Hall

The Great Hall portraits
To mark the 2018 centenary of the first British women winning the right to vote, we commissioned 10 portraits to hang in our Great Hall alongside the existing 10 of our former Vice-Chancellors.
These new portraits feature the women of Bristol who have changed both our institution and the world, from our first female lecturer to the first British woman to have won a Nobel Prize.
They are accompanied by 10 of the brilliant women in today’s University community who continue to be inspired by the legacies of those that have gone before them.
The Reception Room portraits
In 2020, we also unveiled a series of photographic portraits in the Reception Room; these celebrate some of our Black, Asian and minority ethnic (BAME) staff, students and alumni who have led the way in education, the arts, economics, politics, activism and social change.