Vaughan College

Vaughan College was founded in 1862 to provide education for under-educated men in the centre of Leicester. Founded by Revd David Vaughan, it rapidly became a facility for broader adult education and self-improvement for men and women of the town. After 45 years using two town centre schools, in 1908 it moved into its own premises on Great Central Street. Merging with University College Leicester in 1929, it offered more undergraduate level adult education, including many part-time certificate courses and later a degree course. In 1962, with the demolition of its building, a new purpose-built college building was opened, integrated with Jewry Wall Museum and an archaeological site on St Nicholas Circle. In 2013 the university announced plans to close the city centre site, and move the teaching to its main campus, a move which lasted until 2016 when plans were announced for shutting the department altogether.

On 21 March 1862 a meeting was held at St Martin's Boy's School, Friar Lane, to discuss opening a reading room and library for men in the parish. A committee of management was formed, chaired by Revd David Vaughan with 6 further members. Even at this stage, there was a hope that a Working Men's College would result, to 'remedy the deficiencies of elementary education in adulthood' of the many living and working in Leicester. From September 1862 it was called the 'Working Men's Institute, with Library, Reading Room and Classes'. Classes in a variety of subjects were offered, based in the St Martin's Infant School in Union Street. From the following year one-off lectures also featured, on such topics as 'America' and 'Co-operation'. As the popularity of lectures, musical evenings and social events grew, larger venues such as the Temperance Hall were regularly used. Other ways of improving the lot of working people were developed, including a Sick Benefit Society, and a Provident Society, to encourage regular saving, as well as a 'Samaritan Fund' for those too poor to pay the modest subscriptions.

Six years after its inception, the name was changed to 'Working Men's College and Institute', to show its 'humble, yet earnest, endeavour to improve the working classes of the town, intellectually and morally'. From 1880 women aged 17 and upwards were also provided with classes, based in the Friar Lane school, and included reading, writing, arithmetic, spelling, needlework, cutting out, domestic economy, geography, English grammar and composition. Within four years the women had to move to the County School on Great Central Street, to provide more space. By 1912, fifty years after it was founded, the women outnumbered the men, with an enrolment of 1,189 compared to 899 men.

In 1905 David Vaughan died aged 80. Age and ill-health had required him to step back from the college, but for 43 years he had been central to its life and character. Also in 1905, St Martin's Churchwardens sold the Union Street school buildings, giving the college two years to find a new home. The Board of Education agreed to provide a new building on Great Central Street, and in tribute to the work of both David Vaughan and his wife, Margaret, it was named the Vaughan Working Men's College. In 1908 a branch of the Workers' Educational Association (WEA) was established in Leicester, and by 1914 the two organisations were in active partnership, which continued in various forms thereafter. An inspection report of 1917-18 found shortcomings, which arose from falling enrolment, due in some measure to the success of the day-schools over previous years. The solution, they suggested, was to focus on 'higher education of the liberal humanistic type for working people in Leicester'. In 1921 Leicester University College was founded, and from the outset the usefulness of Vaughan College as a 'preparatory institution' was apparent. Plans to utilise the Great Central Street building as the headquarters of the University extramural department progressed. The need for grant-funded investment required the University to be the responsible body, and in 1929 Vaughan Working Men's College ceased to be an independent body, and was taken over by the University College, forming one part of the Department of Adult Education.

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