New status as Hartley University College brought fresh issues in the first few years of the 20th Century.
Student group 1904
Hartley University College
University College of Southampton
The Lord Chancellor, Viscount Haldane, opens the new buildings at Highfield, 20 June 1914
On becoming a university college in 1902, a Senate of professors was created as well as a Council, or governing body. The University College also had a President, the Duke of Wellington, and two Vice-Chancellors, one of which was the co-editor of the Jewish Quarterly Review, Claude Montefiore.
Funding continued to be an issue in those early days. In 1910, Montefiore led a Southampton cohort to meet with the Chancellor of the Exchequer, Lloyd George, to appeal against a reduction in the College grant. Lloyd George agreed to reinstate it on condition that the College help itself. Part of the plan was to move to a new site.
A campaign was launched to raise funds for new buildings, and on 20 June 1914, the renamed University College of Southampton was officially opened at its new Highfield site by the Lord Chancellor Viscount Haldane. It consisted of an arts building, 28 lecture rooms, and single-storey, brick-built laboratories for biology, chemistry, physics and engineering.
Six weeks later, war was declared on Germany and the move from the High Street to Highfield was indefinitely postponed. The new buildings were offered to the War Office as a hospital, and the College remained in its old city centre premises until 1919.
