While staying in Birmingham in the summer for the Commonwealth Games I decided to ask if I could make arrangements to visit the Warwick University campus with my wife and was delighted to be offered a guided tour.
I haven’t been on campus since 1975 so my initial feeling was really one of shock – the campus was virtually unrecognisable, with so many new buildings, tower blocks, a bus station, an arts theatre, and wide variety of places to eat.
Then I thought maybe I should not be too surprised. It is hard for me to remember that I entered as an undergraduate 50 years ago - it does not seem like half a century has passed! I told myself that someone revisiting a location in 1971 who had last been there in 1921 would also notice a fair number of changes.
And it didn’t take long before memories of those years in the early 70’s came flooding back.

Transport 
I got my place at Warwick through Clearing, a bit late to get a room in a hall of residence, so I took up digs in a suburb of Leamington called Lillington. The route from Lillington to Campus was tortuous. It was a 15-20 minute walk to the Midland Red bus stop. The bus then dropped me at the corner of Gibbet Hill Road, which at that time was a single lane each way that led through to the Teacher Training College at Canley. No buses went down it. So that was another 15 minute walk. The whole journey took over an hour. Fortunately, my landlord was a technician in the Physics department and he had a Morris Minor, so provided I was ready to leave at around 8am, he gave me a lift. This was very nice of him, but on days when my first lecture/seminar was at 11.00, not terribly convenient.
I complained to my parents on the phone about the long trek, and mentioned that I planned to buy a small motorbike when I got home. They did not think much of my riding a motorbike down country lanes as winter approached, so when I arrived home after 6 weeks of the first term, there was a 1963 Ford Anglia (the one with the backward sloping back window) waiting for me to take back. It had cost them £50 – about £900 in today’s money.

Student democracy
I remember my first lecture was Macroeconomics with Ben KnightLink opens in a new window. Macroeconomics was a core subject and also attended by Molescis (Molecular Science students) so the lecture theatre was packed.
Before starting the lecture, Ben said we needed to elect three representatives for the Student Council, and he asked for volunteers to step out to the front. Four students, all male, decided to do so. Ben called for a female to step forward and I remember a student called Rosemary did so.

Before voting took place, Ben pointed out that one of the candidates, a mature student named Matt, had served as a shop steward at a car manufacturing plant in Coventry.
We voted by show of hands and the winning candidates were Matt, Rosemary and a third person whose name escapes me. I remember thinking “Well done Ben” – after all, he had virtually hand-picked the reps.

Campus characters
In 1971 the campus was split across two sites. The ‘East Site’ housed the school of Mathematics, where I went for my ‘Maths for Economists’ module. The lecturer made quite an impression on me - he had long unkempt hair, an untrimmed beard, and he wore open toed sandals with no socks all year round. He also carried a long staff with him when he walked between the campuses, reminding me of Moses walking through the wilderness. His name was Tim Poston [Tim Poston obituary | Mathematics | The GuardianLink opens in a new window].

We were quite a small group and the lecture theatre he used had a rolling blackboard and chalk. There was a ledge along the bottom of each board, where sticks of chalk could be placed when not in use. When the board was full, it could be pushed up and over for the next board to come up. He often forgot to take the chalk out of the ledge before he pushed the board up, resulting in the chalks tipping over the top and crashing onto the floor. He would then look at us mournfully and say he wished he could stop doing that as it reminded him of troops going over the top in the first world war.

One topic he taught us was a mathematical method called Simplex. Every week he would give us worksheets, and one particular sheet had a particularly difficult problem to solve. Against this problem he wrote “Things aren’t always what they seem*” . The significance of the asterisk was shown at the bottom of the sheet where he continued “skimmed milk masquerades as cream”.

As I say, he was an eccentric character.
Another episode I remember clearly was in an Economic History lecture, given by Professor Bryan Sadler. He was describing how the coming of the railways in Britain led to movements of population. For the first time men of Kent met men of Yorkshire, and had some trouble understanding what they were saying. One of the students then called out,

“Nay lad, t’other way round”.

1970s computing
One module which I took involved computer programming. In those days all computing was done on a mainframe.

"We had to write programmes in a language called Algol 60. You would handwrite the code, and then sit at a card punch and type your code onto cards with punctuation as necessary."

You would then take your stack of cards, put hard boards on the front and back of the pile and wrap an elastic band around them. You then had a long walk along the corridor opposite the library, down a ramp and then down some stairs to a basement area.

Outside the room where the mainframe was situated was a set of pigeon holes and you would drop your program in a hole and return to the library. 2-3 hours later you would return to find music style sheets of paper wrapped round your punch cards. If you had made any mistakes in your punching of the characters, the program would

have stopped there. You had to take it back to the card punch station and type everything again from the where your error had occurred. As you can imagine, this consumed many hours and I was glad to finish with that particular module.

Leisure time 
I was taken aback by the choice of eating establishments on the modern campus. Back in 1971, we had the Refectory as the main student restaurant, and a snack bar next to the TV lounge which sold traditional fry ups, egg beans, chips, sausages etc.
A student today might find it odd that I described the snack bar as being next to the TV lounge. But in the early 70’s, portable TVs were not very common and worked off indoor aerials so the picture was not all that good. If you wanted to watch TV, the TV lounge in Rootes Hall was the place to go.
I remember on a Thursday you had to get there early - you would get your fry up and take it into the TV room and stay there, because this was the day where you had Top of the Pops, Star Trek, and Monty Python’s Flying Circus all on in the same evening. The TV lounge was packed out on those days.

Graduation
Strange to relate, I have little memory of my graduation in 1974. I see from notes sent to me that it took place in Coventry Cathedral. I do have a photograph of myself and a flatmate in cap and gown from my third year which looks as if it was taken in front of the newly built Tocil Flats. They were first available to live in in September 1972, and I spent my final year there from September 73 to June 74.
So a potpourri of memories from half a century back. It’s funny what events came to mind when I revisited the scene of my studies.

Paul Phillips, August 2022

We are grateful for Paul's reflections on his studies at Warwick as they shed a light on what it was like to study in the early days of the department. Paul matriculated just 6 years after the Department was founded in 1965. In 1971 when Paul commenced his studies, there were just 161 students in the Department of Economics reading single honours Economics and 64 on joint courses. Paul was one of just 73 Economics students at his 1974 graduation.

About the author

Paul Phillips graduated from the Department of Economics in 1974. If you would like to contact him, please email economics.alumni@warwick.ac.uk and we'll forward your message to him.

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