University of Manchester Institute of Science and Technology - UMIST Campus

UMIST Campus

UMIST moved to its present location just south of Manchester city centre at the end of the 19th century. The Main Building (now called the Sackville Street Building) was purpose-built between 1895 and 1902 by Spalding and Cross. Starting in 1927, plans were drawn up by the architects Bradshaw Gass & Hope for an extension which would approximately double the size of the original building. However, construction was delayed by the war and other factors, so that the extension was not fully completed until 1957.

In the 1960s the institution expanded rapidly to the south, growing from a single large building to an entire campus. Around a dozen modern buildings were constructed on the other side of the railway viaduct from the Main Building. The new edifices were designed by leading Manchester architects and were all built out of concrete. They included the Maths and Social Sciences Tower, the Faraday Building, the Renold Building, and the Barnes Wallis Building, the last two of which faced each other across a bowling green, which later became a landscaped garden.

• Three small apple trees, said to have been grown from cuttings taken from the apple trees in Sir Isaac Newton's garden, are planted by the archway containing a statue of Archimedes in his bath by Thompson Dagnall.
• The popular fruit cordial Vimto was formulated in a shed located in the space that UMIST eventually came to cover - around 1991-92 students and others were asked to give their opinions and perhaps vote on a memorial to this invention - the winner was a huge wooden carving of a Vimto bottle surrounded by representations of fruit, the juices of which are used in the product.
• UMIST is on land which used to be home to a large number of dyers' factories by the River Medlock, which now runs through underground culverts beneath the site. An original bend in the river can be traced by observing the angles of two of the arches of the railway viaduct alongside UMIST. These were built slanted to accommodate the winding river.