Woodbrooke Study Centre is a Quaker college in Selly Oak, Birmingham, England.
The only Quaker Study Centre in Europe, [1] [2] it was founded by George Cadbury in 1903 and occupies his former home on the Bristol Road. [3] Woodbrooke's first Director of Studies was the biblical scholar J. Rendel Harris. [4] Other early staff included Horace Gundry Alexander [5] and Leyton Richards, a prominent pacifist who was appointed as Warden in 1916. [6]
The college was extended between 1907 and 1914 by the addition of a new wing, a new common room and Holland House, a men's hostel. By 1922 it was estimated that 1,250 British students and 400 foreign students had attended the college. [7]
It was federated with eight other nearby colleges, known collectively as Selly Oak Colleges.
Woodbrooke provides short courses on personal spiritual growth, theology, creative arts, and training for Quaker roles. Its Centre for Research in Quaker Studies offers postgraduate taught and research degrees through the Universities of Birmingham. [8]
The Quaker Tapestry consists of 77 panels illustrating the history of Quakerism from the 17th century to the present day. The idea of Quaker Anne Wynn-Wilson, the tapestry has a permanent home at the Friends Meeting House at Kendal, Cumbria, England.
The University of Birmingham is a public research university in Birmingham, England. It received its royal charter in 1900 as a successor to Queen's College, Birmingham, and Mason Science College, making it the first English civic or 'red brick' university to receive its own royal charter, and the first English unitary university. It is a founding member of both the Russell Group of British research universities and the international network of research universities, Universitas 21.
Horace Gundry Alexander was an English Quaker teacher, writer, pacifist and ornithologist. He was the youngest of four sons of Joseph Gundry Alexander (1848–1918), two other sons being the ornithologists Wilfred Backhouse Alexander and Christopher James Alexander (1887–1917). He was a friend of Mahatma Gandhi.
Bournville is a model village on the southwest side of Birmingham, England, founded by the Quaker Cadbury family for employees at its Cadbury's factory, and designed to be a "garden" village where the sale of alcohol was forbidden. Cadbury's is well known for chocolate products – including a dark chocolate bar branded Bournville. Historically in northern Worcestershire, it is also a ward within the council constituency of Selly Oak and home to the Bournville Centre for Visual Arts and the Cadbury's chocolate factory. Bournville is known as one of the most desirable areas to live in the UK; research by the Joseph Rowntree Foundation in 2003 found that it was "one of the nicest places to live in Britain".
Selly Oak is an industrial and residential area in south-west Birmingham, England. The area gives its name to Selly Oak ward and includes the neighbourhoods of: Bournbrook, Selly Park, and Ten Acres. The adjoining wards of Edgbaston and Harborne are to the north of the Bourn Brook, which was the former county boundary, and to the south are Weoley, and Bournville. A district committee serves the four wards of Selly Oak, Billesley, Bournville and Brandwood. The same wards form the Birmingham Selly Oak constituency, represented since 2010 by Steve McCabe (Labour). Selly Oak is connected to Birmingham by the Pershore Road (A441) and the Bristol Road (A38). The Worcester and Birmingham Canal and the Birmingham Cross-City Railway Line run across the Local District Centre.
George Cadbury was an English Quaker businessman and social reformer who expanded his father's Cadbury's cocoa and chocolate company in Britain.
Birmingham Selly Oak is a constituency in the West Midlands, represented in the House of Commons of the UK Parliament since 2010 by Steve McCabe of the Labour Party.
Emil Fuchs was a German theologian, the son of Georg Friedrich Fuchs and Auguste Louise Wilhelmine Lonni Hauss.
Cornelis "Kees" Boeke was a Dutch reformist educator, Quaker missionary and pacifist. He is best known for his popular essay/book Cosmic View (1957) which presents a seminal view of the universe, from the galactic to the microscopic scale, and which inspired several films.
The Queen's Foundation for Ecumenical Theological Education is an ecumenical theological college which, with the West Midlands Ministerial Training Course, forms the Centre for Ministerial Formation of the Queen's Foundation for Ecumenical Theological Education. It serves the Church of England and the Methodist Church, and its courses thus have a strong ecumenical emphasis.
Alphonse Mingana was an Assyrian theologian, historian, Syriacist, orientalist and a former priest who is best known for collecting and preserving the Mingana Collection of ancient Middle Eastern manuscripts at Birmingham. Like the majority of Assyrians in the Zakho region, his family belonged to the Chaldean Catholic Church. Alphonse was born to Paolus and Maryam Nano, and had seven siblings.
Lodge Hill Cemetery is a municipal cemetery and crematorium in Selly Oak, Birmingham, England. The cemetery was first opened by King’s Norton Rural District Council in 1895, and during the 1930s became the site of Birmingham's first municipal crematorium.
Selly Oak Colleges was a federation of educational facilities which in the 1970s and 1980s was at the forefront of debates about ecumenism - the coming together of Christian churches and the creation of new united churches such as the Church of South India; the relationships between Christianity and other religions, especially Islam and Judaism; child-centred teacher training; and the theology of Christian mission. It was located on a substantial campus in Selly Oak, a suburb in the south-west of Birmingham, England, about a mile from the University of Birmingham. In 2001 the largest college, Westhill College, whose main work was the training of teachers, passed into the hands of the University of Birmingham, and most of the remaining colleges closed, leaving Woodbrooke College, a study and conference centre for the Society of Friends, and Fircroft College, a small adult education college with residential provision, which continue today.
Geoffrey Fillingham Nuttall was a British Congregational minister and ecclesiastical historian.
Dame Elizabeth Mary Cadbury was a British activist and philanthropist. Her husband was George Cadbury, the chocolate manufacturer.
Fircroft College is a specialist adult residential college based in Selly Oak, Birmingham, England.
Edward Cadbury was a British chairman of Cadbury Brothers, business theorist, and philanthropist, known for his pioneering works on management and organisations.
Selly Manor is a timber-framed building in Bournville, that was moved to its current site in 1916 by chocolate manufacturer and philanthropist George Cadbury.
The Mingana Collection of Middle Eastern manuscripts, comprising over 3,000 documents, is held by the University of Birmingham's Cadbury Research Library.
Nathaniel Akinremi Fadipe was a Nigerian researcher and pan-African anti-colonial activist. After studying in Nigeria, Britain and the United States, Fadipe taught economics at the Achimota College in the early 1930s. He then returned to Britain, where he completed an anthropology doctorate at the London School of Economics, on the sociology of the Yoruba people, and participated in anti-imperialist and anti-colonialist activism.
52°25′52″N1°56′53″W / 52.4311°N 1.9481°W