Marischal College - History

History

Marischal College and University of Aberdeen was the formal name of the former university which occupied the present Marischal College site. The College was founded in 1593 by George Keith, 5th Earl Marischal of Scotland. The original charter of the university was lost by the early 18th century, but two near-contemporary copies exist - one of which was accepted by the courts in 1756 as being authentic. In this charter, Marischal College is described variously as a gymnasium, collegium (college), academia (academy) and universitas (university).

Marischal was the second of Scotland's post-mediaeval 'civic universities', following the University of Edinburgh, created without Papal bull and with a more modern structure and a greater resemblance to the Protestant arts colleges of continental Europe. As such, both Edinburgh and Marischal came to be known as the 'Town Colleges' of their respective cities. The university was founded with the expressed aim of training clergy for the post-Reformation Kirk. It is believed that Keith desired a protestant institution alongside the pre-Reformation King's College, although King's had been Protestant since 1569. It is possible that the founding of another college in nearby Fraserburgh in 1592 was the true cause; its founder Sir Alexander Fraser was a business rival of Marischal.

The College was constructed on the site of a medieval Franciscan Friary, disused after the Reformation. This building was later replaced by a William Adam designed building in the mid-18th century, however this, together with the Friary remains, were demolished entirely for the construction of the present building between 1835 and 1906. The college's Greek motto translates as "virtue is self-sufficient".

The Mitchell Hall, where University of Aberdeen graduations historically take place, was built in the early 20th century. It is named for Dr Charles Mitchell, an alumnus of the university and a Tyneside shipbuilder. A large stained-glass window dominates the hall, executed by TR Spence of London and representing the university's history.

The building was commended by poet John Betjeman following a visit to Aberdeen in 1947:

"No-one can dismiss Marischal College, Aberdeen, when looking at the work of the present century. Wedged behind a huge town hall in an expensive and attractive mid-Victorian baronial style, I saw a cluster of silver-white pinnacles. I turned down a lane towards them, the front broadened out. Oh! Bigger than any cathedral, tower on tower, forests of pinnacles, a group of palatial buildings rivalled only by the Houses of Parliament at Westminster.

“This was the famous Marischal College. Imagine the Victorian tower with a spire on top, and all that well-grouped architecture below of lesser towers, and lines of pinnacles executed in the hardest white Kemnay granite and looking out over the grey-green North Sea and you have some idea of the first impression this gigantic building creates.

“It rises on top of a simple Gothic one designed by Simpson in 1840. But all these spires and towers and pinnacles are the work of this century and were designed by Sir Alexander Marshall Mackenzie. You have to see them to believe them.”

There is an urban legend that Marischal College was Adolf Hitler's favourite building in the United Kingdom and that he would have liked to have used it as a residence if the outcome of the Second World War had been different. This was a fabrication by students at the University of Aberdeen and the noted Aberdeen historian, David Webster.