Life and times of city's artistic institution

UNIVERSITY MARKS 170TΤΗ ANNIVERSARY

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A PLYMOUTH institution which has provided a guiding hand to artists and creatives and turned ideas into reality is marking its 170th anniversary today.

The institution known as Arts University Plymouth started out as Plymouth Drawing School, and is believed to have been founded on January 21, 1856.

It was started in modest rented rooms on Park Street, in Stoke, and was said to be the brainchild of George Jago, the then Master of Plymouth Free School, in Cobourg Street.

Its original mission was to teach architecture and mechanical drawing, and drawing as applied to shipbuilding.

The school opened by offering morning and afternoon classes for gentlemen and evening classes for those already in employment, with the rooms secured by William Eastlake, and John J Offord hired as drawing master.

It quickly became known as Plymouth School of Art, and claimed both civic and national support, with Sir Charles Lock Eastlake a subscriber, and Prince Albert a patron.

Within a year, the school outgrew Park Street and moved to the Brethren Chapel, a Primitive Methodist Chapel on Ebrington Street.

A dispute led to Offord’s departure and the school closed for around four years, before reopening in 1863 in the Assembly Rooms at the Royal Hotel, George Street, with Thomas Holmes brought in as drawing master.

By May 1865, student numbers were reported at around 310. In 1886, the school moved to Princess Square, described as the fashionable heart of Plymouth.

Princess Square also sat within Plymouth’s civic centre, named after a visit by Princess Victoria. Local histories place the School of Art within this setting, close to civic institutions including the Plymouth Athenaeum, and associate the area with the work of the architect John Foulston.