Motto | Latin: Arvorum Cultus Pecorumque; (from Virgil's Georgics) "Caring for the Fields and the Beasts" | ||||||||
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Type | Public | ||||||||
Established | 2013 - University status 1845 – College | ||||||||
President | Charles III | ||||||||
Vice-Chancellor | Peter McCaffery | ||||||||
Students | 1,100 (2022/23) [1] | ||||||||
Undergraduates | 915 (2022/23) [1] | ||||||||
Postgraduates | 185 (2022/23) [1] | ||||||||
Location | , 51°32′35″N1°59′42″W / 51.54306°N 1.99500°W | ||||||||
Campus | Rural | ||||||||
Chair of Governing Council | Dame Fiona Reynolds | ||||||||
Colours | |||||||||
Website | rau | ||||||||
National rankings | |
---|---|
Complete (2025) [2] | 119 |
Times / Sunday Times (2025) [3] | 131 |
The Royal Agricultural University (RAU), formerly the Royal Agricultural College, is a public university in Cirencester, Gloucestershire, England. Established in 1845, [4] it was the first agricultural college in the English-speaking world. [5] The university provides undergraduate and postgraduate programmes to students from over 45 countries in the course areas of Agriculture, Business, Cultural Heritage, Environment, Equine, and Land & Property.
The Royal Agricultural University was founded as the Royal Agricultural College in 1842, [6] at a meeting of the Fairford and Cirencester Farmers’ Club. Concerned by the lack of government support for education, Robert Jeffreys-Brown addressed the meeting on "The Advantages of a Specific Education for Agricultural Pursuits". [7] A prospectus was circulated, a general committee was appointed and Henry Bathurst, 4th Earl Bathurst was elected president. Funds were raised by public subscription: much of the support came from the wealthy landowners and farmers of the day, and there was no government support. Construction of the main building, in Victorian Tudor style, began in April 1845 and was designed by S. W. Daukes and John R. Hamilton, and built by Thomas Bridges of Cirencester. [8] The first 25 students were admitted to the college in September 1845.
Queen Victoria granted a royal charter to the college in 1845 and sovereigns have been patrons ever since, visiting the college in every reign. King Charles III became president in 1982. The college gained full university status in 2013 and changed its name accordingly. [9] It had 1,125 students in the 2022/23 academic year [1] and saw a 49% rise in applications between 2008 and 2013. [10] In 2021 the RAU expanded with the creation of a Cultural Heritage Institute based in Swindon. [11]
The RAU ranked in the top 10 universities in the UK for the best student experience and was the highest-ranking university in Gloucestershire, according to the Sunday Times Good University Guide 2023. [12] It was shortlisted in the Small or Specialist category in the Whatuni Student Choice Awards 2024. [13] The RAU debuted in the Times Higher Education (THE) University Impact Rankings 2024 in the top 200 globally for Zero Hunger (Goal 2) – coming in at joint 15th for UK universities and joint 12th for an English University. While, for the Life on Land Goal (Goal 15), the RAU was in the top 300 globally and joint 38th for a UK university. [14] The university ranked in the top 10 nationally for the Land and Property Management subject area in the Complete University Guide 2025. [15]
The university operates two farms close to the campus:
Harnhill Manor Farm was purchased in 2009 and with Coates Manor Farm totals [16] 491 hectares (1,210 acres) of land. The farm was managed organically for many years but all the land apart from the outdoor-pig unit was taken out of organic management. In 2011, an old sheep shed at the front of the farm complex was turned into the 'John Oldacre Rural Innovation Centre' a building designed for the training of students and members of the public in vocational skills such as rough-terrain forklift truck driving, blacksmithing, chainsaw and welding course, etc. The building cost £1.2 million to transform. [17] The JORIC was officially opened in March 2014 by Sir John Beddington and the site was visited in November 2013 by Prince Charles.
The university has a range of sports facilities on campus, including a gym, an all-weather pitch, and squash and tennis courts. Students participate in a wide range of sports including; clay pigeon shooting, cricket, equestrian, field sports (hunting, fishing and shooting), football, golf, lacrosse, hockey, netball, polo, rugby, rifle shooting, rowing, tennis and yachting. [18]
The Royal Agricultural University is just one of three remaining British universities (the others being the University of Cambridge and the University of Oxford) to maintain their own beagle pack. Founded in 1889, the RAU Beagles is run by the students who whip in and hunt the hounds, and until the 2004 hunting ban, hunted hares in the countryside around Cirencester. [19]
In the Research Excellence Framework (REF) 2021, 52% of the university's research was classed as 3* or 4* meaning it is world-leading or internationally excellent. In addition, half of the university's scientific publications were deemed to be of international quality. [20] In Research England's Knowledge Exchange Framework, the university was grouped into the STEM cluster – small specialist universities in medicine, science, and engineering – ranking second out of the nine institutions in the cluster. The university was recognised as having very high or high engagement in five of the seven criteria on which it was judged. [21]
The university library holds around 40,000 print volumes, nearly 1,000 current journal subscriptions, more than 40,000 e-books and a growing number of full-text databases. [22] The main collection is supplemented by a support collection and a historical collection of texts, primarily on agriculture and estate/land management, dating back to the 16th century. The library also holds the RAU archive, a collection of documents relating to the institution since its foundation.
In April 2023, the university was criticised by animal rights activists after students tied a dead fox to the roof of a car during a charity event. [23] The university launched an investigation and issued a range of sanctions relating to the incident that included permanent expulsion. [24]
Similarly, on 29 March 2023 it was reported by Channel 4 News that the Royal Agricultural College Beagles were allegedly hare-coursing - an act that has been illegal since 2005. [25]
The patron of RAU and its predecessor institution, the Royal Agricultural College, has always been the reigning British monarch. [26] The gap between Queen Elizabeth II and King Charles III occurred because of a review of royal patronages.
Royal Agricultural University graduates have won a number of awards and prizes, including the Farmers Weekly Young Farmer Of The Year Award (James Price 2009 [33] and Adrian Ivory 2008 [34] ).
Notable students from the institution include:
Arts and Media
Peerage
Politics
Sports
Other
Harmondsworth is a village in the London Borough of Hillingdon in the county of Greater London with a short border to the south onto London Heathrow Airport and close to the Berkshire county border. The village has no railway stations, but adjoins the M4 motorway and the A4 road. Harmondsworth was in the historic county of Middlesex until 1965. It is an ancient parish that once included the large hamlets of Heathrow, Longford and Sipson. Longford and Sipson have modern signposts and facilities as separate villages, remaining to a degree interdependent such as for schooling. The Great Barn and parish church are medieval buildings in the village. The largest proportion of land in commercial use is related to air transport and hospitality. The village includes public parkland with footpaths and abuts the River Colne and biodiverse land in its Regional Park to the west, once the grazing meadows and woodlands used for hogs of Colnbrook.
Pembroke College, a constituent college of the University of Oxford, is located on Pembroke Square, Oxford. The college was founded in 1624 by King James I of England and VI of Scotland, using in part the endowment of merchant Thomas Tesdale, and was named after William Herbert, 3rd Earl of Pembroke, Lord Chamberlain and then-Chancellor of the University.
Milton Abbey School is a private school for day and boarding pupils in the village of Milton Abbas, near Blandford Forum in Dorset, in South West England. It has 224 pupils as of September 2023, in five houses: Athelstan, Damer, Hambro, Hodgkinson and Tregonwell. The school was founded in 1954 and is co-educational.
Cirencester is a market town and civil parish in the Cotswold District of Gloucestershire, England. Cirencester lies on the River Churn, a tributary of the River Thames. It is the eighth largest settlement in Gloucestershire and the largest town within the Cotswolds. It is the home of the Royal Agricultural University, the oldest agricultural college in the English-speaking world, founded in 1840. The town had a population of 20,229 in 2021. The town is 18 miles (29 km) northwest of Swindon, 18 miles (29 km) southeast of Gloucester, 37 miles (60 km) west of Oxford and 39 miles (63 km) northeast of Bristol.
Shrewsbury School is a public school in Shrewsbury.
Richard Grosvenor, 2nd Marquess of Westminster, styled The Honourable Richard Grosvenor from 1795 to 1802, Viscount Belgrave from 1802 to 1831 and Earl Grosvenor from 1831 to 1845, was an English politician, landowner, property developer and benefactor.
St Edmund's College is a constituent college of the University of Cambridge in England. Founded in 1896, it is the second-oldest of the three Cambridge colleges oriented to mature students, which accept only students reading for postgraduate degrees or for undergraduate degrees if aged 21 years or older.
The Royal Veterinary College is a veterinary school located in London and a member institution of the federal University of London. The RVC was founded in 1791 and joined the University of London in 1949. It is the oldest and largest Veterinary school in the United Kingdom, and one of only 11 in the country where students can study to become a vet.
Peregrine Andrew Morny Cavendish, 12th Duke of Devonshire,, is an English peer. He is the only surviving son of Andrew Cavendish, 11th Duke of Devonshire, and his wife, the former Deborah Mitford. He succeeded to the dukedom following the death of his father on 3 May 2004. Before his succession, he was styled Earl of Burlington from 1944 until 1950 and Marquess of Hartington between 1950 and 2004. His immediate family are owner-occupiers of Chatsworth House with an estimated net worth of £910 million, and own large estates in Derbyshire, North Yorkshire and Ireland.
St Mary's Hospital is an NHS district general hospital in Paddington, in the City of Westminster, London, founded in 1845. Since the UK's first academic health science centre was created in 2008, it has been operated by Imperial College Healthcare NHS Trust, which also operates Charing Cross Hospital, Hammersmith Hospital, Queen Charlotte's and Chelsea Hospital and the Western Eye Hospital.
William James Robert Peel, 3rd Earl Peel,, styled Viscount Clanfield until 1969, is a British hereditary peer who was a Conservative peer from 15 May 1973 until October 2006 when, on his appointment as Lord Chamberlain of the Royal Household, he became a crossbench (non-partisan) member of the House of Lords.
Apethorpe Palace, formerly known as "Apethorpe Hall", is a Grade I listed country house, dating to the 15th century, close to Apethorpe, Northamptonshire. It was a "favourite royal residence" for James I.
Events from the year 1845 in the United Kingdom.
Cirencester Park is a country house in the parish of Cirencester in Gloucestershire, England, and is the seat of the Bathurst family, Earls Bathurst. It is a Grade II* listed building. The gardens are Grade I listed on the Register of Historic Parks and Gardens.
Honouring individuals buried in Westminster Abbey has a long tradition. Over 3,300 people are buried or commemorated in the abbey. For much of the abbey's history, most of the people buried there besides monarchs were people with a connection to the church – either ordinary locals or the monks of the abbey itself, who were generally buried without surviving markers. Since the 18th century, it has become a prestigious honour for any British person to be buried or commemorated in the abbey, a practice much boosted by the lavish funeral and monument of Sir Isaac Newton, who died in 1727. By 1900, so many prominent figures were buried in the abbey that the writer William Morris called it a "National Valhalla".
Allen Christopher Bertram Bathurst, 9th Earl Bathurst, known as Lord Apsley until 2011, is a British peer, landowner and property developer.
Harper Adams University, founded in 1901 as Harper Adams College, is a public university located close to the village of Edgmond, near Newport, in Shropshire, England. Established in 1901, the college is a specialist provider of higher education for the agricultural and rural sector. It gained university college status in 1998, and university status in 2012.
Most prime ministers of the United Kingdom have enjoyed the right to display coats of arms and to this day, prime ministers have their ancestral arms approved, or new armorial bearings granted, either by the College of Arms or the Lyon Court.
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