Aldenmoor Main Campus

Overview

The Aldenmoor Main Campus is the historic and administrative heart of the University — a 185-acre estate set in the market town of Aldenmoor in the county of Shropshire. The campus has grown continuously since the University’s founding in 1847, when the original Pemberton Building was the sole structure on a then-undeveloped site.

The campus is organised around the collegiate system: each of the fourteen colleges is a self-governing academic community with its own dining hall, common rooms, library, and gardens. Students are admitted to a college as well as to a faculty, and much of the intellectual life of the University takes place within, and across, these college communities.

Key buildings and collections

• Pemberton Library — 1.2 million volumes; the Willoughby Rare Books Room houses manuscripts from the twelfth century.
• Harwick Collection of Antiquities — 4,000 Greek and Roman artefacts, open to the public Wednesday to Sunday.
• Aldenmoor Gallery — permanent collection of 600 works; rotating exhibitions; free admission.
• Eliot Auditorium — 620-seat concert and lecture hall, home to the Aldenmoor Music Society.
• The University Chapel — a Grade I listed building dating to 1853; non-denominational services weekly.