Liverpool College of Art

• 1. Introduction

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  Liverpool College of Art traces an unbroken history back to 1825, which makes it the oldest school of art in England outside London. For over a century its classrooms sat inside a building on Liverpool's Hope Street. That building later changed hands entirely, and the institution itself changed its name more than once. Painters, sculptors, cartoonists, and a future architect passed through its rooms, alongside a student who later found fame as a musician. Who taught inside that Hope Street building, what became of it, and how did the school end up linked to British rock music?

• 2. The Hope Street Building

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  From 1883, the college occupied a building at 68 Hope Street in Liverpool. Thomas Cook designed the structure, which is now a Grade II listed building. Cook's design won a competition that drew 96 entries. Building it cost £12,000, and most of that sum came from a single member of the school's Board of Directors. In 1910, the architectural firm Willink & Thicknesse added an extension; the same firm had designed Liverpool's Cunard Building. That extension cost £19,852. William Willink stepped down from his own post as the college's Director of Technical Instruction so he could carry out the commission himself. The new wing abutted 68 Hope Street and fronted the school's older premises on Mount Street. That Mount Street building later became the Liverpool Institute High School for Boys, and afterward the Liverpool Institute for Performing Arts, known as LIPA. In March 2012, LIPA announced that it had bought the former Liverpool College of Art building, paying £3.7 million to expand its own teaching space. That purchase closed the Hope Street building's long run as a dedicated art school. By then, the institution which the building once housed had already moved to new premises.

• 3. From School To University

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  In 1949, the Ministry of Education granted the school, previously called Liverpool School of Art, the title of Regional College of Art for Liverpool. In 1970, Liverpool College of Art became part of the newly formed Liverpool Polytechnic. That Polytechnic gained university status in 1992, becoming Liverpool John Moores University. The university's School of Art and Design left Hope Street altogether in 2008, moving to new premises at the Art and Design Academy. Long before that final move, the college's own classrooms had already sent students out into architecture, publishing, and popular music.

• 4. Staff In The Lennon Years

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  By the late 1950s, when John Lennon and Stuart Sutcliffe were students there, the college's principal was W. L. Stevenson. The teaching staff at that time included Walter Norman, Julia Carter Preston, Arthur Ballard, Charles Burton, and Nicholas Horsfield. It also included George Mayer-Marton, E. S. S. English, Alfred K. Wiffen, Austin Davies, and Philip Hartas. Within a couple of decades, a new mix of students and tutors there would form a band and sign to an American label.

• 5. Deaf School And Warner Bros

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  In 1975, a mix of Fine Art students and tutors at the college came together to form a band. Among them were Clive Langer, Steve Allen, Tim Whittaker, Sam Davis, Steve Lindsey, John Wood, and Roy Holt. Derek Taylor, a former Beatles publicist who by then headed Warner Bros' UK office, is credited with discovering the group. That connection led to a recording contract with Warner Bros Records in the United States. Deaf School, as the band called itself, is acknowledged as one of the catalysts of Liverpool's post-Beatles musical revival. Long before the band signed its deal, one Liverpool life model had already been sitting for students inside the same building for decades.

• 6. The College's Life Model

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  June Furlong worked as a life model at the college for 48 years, from 1947 to 1995. Furlong also modelled at the Slade School of Fine Art, Goldsmiths College, and the Royal College of Art. She sat for artists including Augustus John, Lucian Freud, and Frank Auerbach. Furlong's decades on the stool ran alongside a long list of students, some famous and many still barely known outside Liverpool.

• 7. A Long Roll Of Alumni

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  Sir James Stirling studied at the college while he was working at an architect's office, having already left school. Cynthia Lennon, John Meirion Morris, Maurice Cockrill, Ray Walker, Margaret Chapman, Ruth Duckworth, Phillida Nicholson, and Bill Harry are also counted among its former students. The wider alumni list includes Jane Greenwood, a costume designer, Shirley Hughes, an author and illustrator, and Norman Thelwell, a cartoonist. It also includes Phoebe Stabler, a sculptor, Ronald William "Josh" Kirby, and Richard Paton, who worked at Rainbow Glass Studios in London. The list continues with George Adamson, Kay Anderson, Margaret Blundell, Dorothy Bradford, Helen Clapcott, and May Louise Greville Cooksey. It runs on through Edith Edmonds, John Francis Kavanagh, Edward Kelly, Alexander Mackenzie, Lilian Rathmell, Isabel Rawsthorne, Stanley Reed, Sidney Sime, and Geoffrey Heath Wedgwood. John Wood, listed among the alumni, is remembered specifically as a design theorist, a strand of the college's legacy that reached beyond painting and music.