History of the OU

Open University staff at Walton Hall have been informed that this week the RAF Hut on campus is to be demolished to reduce costs and carbon emissions. The RAF Hut came from RAF Cardington as a temporary building in 1969. It was finally demolished 42 years later in July 2011. Recently it has been used mainly for storage but the hut’s structural condition had deteriorated and it is no longer fit for purpose.

Several huts were erected as temporary accommodation in 1969 and 1970, but because of a shortage of capital funding ended up being in still in use many years later.

Visit the History of the OU website for more information about the history of the campus at Walton Hall.

This weekend would have marked the 90^th birthday of Sir Kenneth Berrill, University Pro-Chancellor 1983-96, who died in April last year. Following 20 years as a university economics lecturer, Berrill was appointed chair of the University Grants Committee in 1969 and then Chief Economic Advisor at the Treasury. After a brief spell in the City, during which he had taken up the Open University’s Pro-Chancellorship, he became chairman of the Securities and Investment Board, the precursor of the Financial Services Authority. (more…)

Lord Mountbatton at Walton Hall

The University had moved to the site with the support of Milton Keynes Development Corporation in September 1969. At this point forty years ago it was doing its best to attract applicants by an August deadline to start in January 1971.