Iconic Bristol landmark turns 100

Park Street and the Wills Memorial Building tower on the day that King George V and Queen Mary opened the building, 9 June 1925.Image courtesy of Special Collections, University of Bristol Library (DM508).

The ‘Great George’ bell arriving at the Wills Memorial Building, 4 April 1925, in a lorry driven from Messrs John Taylor & Co, Loughborough, where the bell was cast.Image courtesy of Special Collections, University of Bristol Library (DM655).

The Great Hall of the Wills Memorial Building following air-raid damage, after Bristol suffered its first major air raid of the war on 24 November 1940 when an incendiary bomb hit the building. Image courtesy of Special Collections, University of Bristol Library (DM252/2).

Press release issued: 9 June 2025

The sound of bells chiming will be heard across the city today to mark the 100th anniversary of the Wills Memorial Building, one of Bristol’s most iconic buildings.

The University of Bristol’s striking building and tower at the top of Park Street was officially opened on 9 June 1925 by King George V and Queen Mary to great excitement, with many thousands of people lining the streets to witness the historic event.

One hundred years later and Great George, the 9.5 tonne bell which sits in the 66m high tower, will be rung manually by a team of bell ringers and heard up to 12 miles away.

Poet and educator Dr Lawrence Hoo, who has long championed anti-racism and decolonisation in education and research, has also been commissioned to write a poem to mark the centenary and capture the building’s rich – and at times controversial - history.

Built on the site of the former Bristol Blind Asylum, the construction of the Wills Memorial Building was funded by George Alfred Wills and Henry Herbert Wills to honour their father, Henry Overton Wills III. He was a major benefactor and first Chancellor of the University.

It was commissioned in 1912 and designed by George Oatley, described as the last ‘Victorian Architect’ and Bristol’s most important architect of the 20th Century. He produced an imposing design in the Perpendicular Gothic style, which was to become the last great Gothic secular building to be built in Britain – and one of the last in the country to be constructed using wooden scaffolding.

Construction began in 1915 but was delayed by the First World War, leading to its opening a decade later.

Thousands of Bristolians lined Queens Road and Park Street to catch a glimpse of the royal couple in 1925. Presented with a golden key to unlock the building's doors, the pair were also the first to sign the visitors' book, to which the names of numerous famous and distinguished guests have since been added.

The newspapers at the time reported that in the heat and the crush, there were a large number of minor casualties, and many people fainted. For three days after the opening ceremony, a continuous stream of people thronged to the Wills Memorial Building to see the interior. Estimates were that 30,000 people visited in one day alone.

The last one hundred years have not always treated the building kindly. During the Bristol Blitz in 1940, an incendiary bomb severely damaged the Great Hall. Luckily the tower, although damaged, remained standing.

Winston Churchill, the University’s Chancellor from 1929 to 1965, famously presided over degree ceremonies in the Great Hall when it was just a rough-walled box covered with a corrugated iron roof which often leaked.

A major restoration effort, completed in 1963, saw the building reopened by Harry Patch, a First World War veteran who had contributed to its initial construction.

Throughout its century of existence, the Wills Memorial Building has been a hub of academic life. Home to the School of Earth Sciences and the Law School, the building has fostered ambition, discovery, and achievement within its lecture theatres, libraries, common rooms, and event spaces.

Tours of the building have been run for the last 24 years, raising over £48,000 for the Grand Appeal, the dedicated charity for Bristol Children’s Hospital.

Hundreds of thousands of students have graduated in the Great Hall, along with many notable people who have been awarded honorary degrees, including Thomas Hardy, Alexander Fleming, Daniel Day Lewis, Emily Watson, Terry Pratchett, Tony Robinson, James Blunt, Matt Lucas, and Julia Donaldson.

People who have made a significant impact on Bristol have also been honoured over the years, including Paul Stephenson - one of Britain’s most important civil rights campaigners and a leading organiser of the Bristol bus boycott in 1963.

More recently, the Wills Memorial Building has been central to conversations around the University’s past. A public consultation launched in 2022 centred on whether seven buildings, whose names were linked to families and figures with connections to the transatlantic trade in enslaved Africans or associated products such as tobacco, sugar and cocoa, should be renamed. Although they were not slaveowners or slave-traders, the Wills family owed a substantial proportion of their wealth to trading in tobacco grown by enslaved people.

The University is now working with staff, students and the local community on a series of targeted initiatives, to redress some of the systemic injustices arising from the transatlantic trafficking of enslaved African people which includes ensuring the Wills family’s full story and historic connection to the University are made more visible.

Professor Evelyn Welch, Vice-Chancellor and President of the University of Bristol, said: “The Wills Memorial Building has been an integral part of the student journey for generations, seeing thousands learn, grow and graduate beneath its vaulted ceilings.

“Its place in the city reminds us of important lessons from the University’s past, which stand together with the limitless potential of its future.”