The Dean of Arts and Humanities has written to students in his faculty to outline plans for the University to move out of King’s Manor in 2026, and to relocate the Archaeology department to Campus West.
In an email sent to Humanities postgraduate students yesterday, the Dean of Arts and Humanities Professor Duncan Petrie detailed plans to split the faculty between Berrick Saul Building and Heslington Hall.
The new year delay is due to Archaeology’s new home at Berrick Saul needing to go under “extensive works” to support laboratory work, causing the date for the University vacating King’s Manor to be pushed back.
The University website cites accessibility as one of the key reasons motivating this change, claiming that it is impossible to make the Grade 1 Listed King’s Manor building fit for modern use.
Another motivation for this decision is the substantial running costs and conservation costs that come with keeping the King’s Manor Building open.
Figures from the 2022-23 year show that the building cost £500,000 to run, with a £1 million maintenance backlog and estimated further £15 million longer-term costs.
The Estates team also estimated that only 36% of the available space at King’s Manor was usable, compared to, for instance, 80% on Campus West.
In the summer of 2024, Arts and Humanities set up a Project Board with representatives from across the faculty which met in September.
In an email to postgraduate students, Professor Petrie said: “we absolutely recognise that there is no perfect solution here.
“Whilst we may all appreciate that we need to share space differently as there is significant under usage at the moment we know how important the right space is to be able to study, work and feel part of a community.”
The plans agreed by the Project Board in the article largely align with the option they discussed in September.
Archaeology will move to Berrick Saul, which Professor Petrie said was the: “best place for its large teaching commitments and laboratory space”, in Summer 2026.
A new “hub” for Arts & Humanities will be created in Heslington Hall, including the Humanities Research Centre, Centre for Eighteenth-Century Studies, Centre for Medieval Studies, Centre for Renaissance and Early Modern Studies.
White Rose College of the Arts & Humanities and Research Supervision Project will join them at Heslington Hall.
Remaining at Berrick Saul will be: Wolfson Centre for Child Development and Family Research, Centre for the Study of Christianity and Culture, Leverhulme Centre for Anthropocene Biodiversity.
As a consequence of Arts & Humanities moving into Heslington Hall, the University has confirmed that the Executive Board will depart by February 2025 for temporary locations.
The minutes of the September meeting suggest that their new permanent home is planned to be in one of two new Professional Services hubs.
This, which will be shared with the University Secretary, Governance and Legal in Market Square, is expected to ready by Spring 2025.
The other one will be on 1 Innovation Close, opposite the Research Centre for Social Sciences, which will house Human Resources and Finance in August 2025.
Berrick Saul residents will be relocated to Heslington Hall at the start of the next academic year.
The King’s Manor Library will vacate in the Summer of 2025 as previously planned, while Archaeology will remain there in preparation for being the final department to leave the year after.
King’s Manor, originally built to house the abbots of St Mary’s Abbey, was named by Henry VIII as the seat of the Council of the North after the Dissolution of the Monasteries in 1539. In the intervening centuries, it served as a private residence and a school for the blind, but it has been leased to the University since 1964.