Team GB Olympian opens new student accommodation

Wednesday, 05 September 2012

V-C Sir David Bell, Jonty Clarke and UPP Chief Executive Sean O'Shea with the plaque

The University's new accommodation, Childs Hall and Stenton Townhouses, were formally opened by Team GB Olympian Jonty Clarke at a special event on Tuesday 4 September. Jonty lived in the old Childs Hall while he was studying economics at the University of Reading (he graduated in 2002). 

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The new accommodation, which has replaced the fondly remembered but ageing 1960s-built Childs Hall, forms part of the offering to students for this coming academic year, and will be managed and operated by the University's accommodation partners, University Partnerships Programme (UPP).

Staff, students and alumni were given tours of the new halls and gathered in Park Eat to hear from Jonty Clarke, UPP Chief Executive and Sir David Bell.

Vice-Chancellor Sir David Bell said: "This year, more than ever, with the introduction of higher tuition fees, universities will need to be on their mettle to ensure they provide the highest quality student experience. While it is the challenging academic standards and excellence in teaching at Reading that first grabs the interest of our future students, we know that providing facilities appropriate to our world-class standing and international reputation is also hugely important.

"With the opening of these wonderful new student residences, which are already completed booked up for 2012/13, we will have completed over 1800 new bedrooms in the past two years, ensuring we offer accommodation to students, which is second to none."

A plaque with poignant words from the University's first Vice-Chancellor W M Childs after whom the hall is named, was unveiled on the side of one of the new buildings. It reads:

‘Universities are living things: they feel, think and do. They are centres of intelligence; they are concerned with ideas; they have outposts upon the frontiers of knowledge; they sometimes do beautiful and memorable things; they dream and imagine.' W M Childs (1869-1939)

The £30 million construction project has created 594 bedrooms in new Childs Hall, providing bright, comfortable self-catering accommodation in modern well-appointed buildings. In addition the 25 Stenton Townhouses each boast 12 study bedrooms arranged over 3 floors with a modern, spacious shared kitchen/dining and lounge area on the ground floor.

Construction, cladding and landscaping will reflect the style of phase one of the University's halls project, which was completed in 2010. All of the new accommodation will achieve the BREAM environmental standard of ‘excellent'.

Stenton Hall and Townhouses are named after Sir Frank Stenton, the University's third Vice Chancellor (1946-50), and the names for each block also continue the existing Berkshire village theme.