Here are 10 things about Warwick University life that would put a Victorian child in a coma

Everyone marvels at how rapidly society changes from one epoch to another. So in order to imagine what our forebearers would make of university life as we know it, enter a scruffy little street urchin from Victorian London to provide their reaction to the following hallmarks of Warwick existence…

1. Circles

Warwick students at a society circle (via Matthew Honisett)

If a Dickensian chimney sweep stumbled upon a society circle, they would think they had walked into a meeting of some sort of cult. A group of young people (who should be in the factories or down the mines as far as this young child is concerned) sat in a half-formed circle with extravagant costumes would be enough to give said child a thumping headache.

Telling them that these people play absurd games like “One frog jumped over the fence, Splash!”, would certainly make them feel dizzy. Adding in the fact that copious amounts of a beverage known only as “Purple” are consumed, would be enough to induce a coma.

2. The Students’ Union

Trade unions were first legalised by the Trade Union Act (1871) – thirty-four years into Queen Victoria’s reign. So the mere notion that students (the ungrateful, snotty little urchins that they are) would come together to prevent their very generous lecturers working them too hard, and to defend their right to sleep all day and drink all night, is a baffling one. I have a good mind to give you all a stern caning for your insolence!

3. Warwick Arts Centre

If the first screening of a steam train in 1895 was enough to make members of the audience feint in terror, it would only take 30 seconds of Avatar: Fire and Ash in 4D at the Arts Centre’s multi-screen cinema to send even the sturdiest Victorian gentleman (let alone a child) into a ten-year coma – even if he has brought his 8.5 per cent bottle of Henry Westons Cider into the cinema with him.

4. Student bars

The Terrace Bar (T-Bar) in the Students’ Union of Warwick university campus.

The lingo alone would be enough to confuse a Victorian child, as it did me when I first arrived at Warwick. “I say Gerald, what on earth is this ‘T-Bar’ place they speak of? And where in the name of Her Majesty is this ‘Duck’ they so often mention?’ ‘I’m afraid Arthur, I don’t have the faintest notion! Nothing but dens of debauchery I should think – not for fine, respectable young men like us, what?”.

It’s just as well. They wouldn’t be able to get a table in the Duck past 5pm on pub quiz night anyway.

5. Student accommodation

Not only are these students wasting their privileged education on frivolity and impracticality in one the Crown’s finest institutions, but they also appear to live as would a monarch. 19th century slums would accommodate up to fifty people crammed under one roof.

These days, you get the same amount of sympathetic pity from a Warwick student if you tell them you live in Rootes or Tocil. To a Victorian child, you are practically nobility if you live in Cryfield or Sherbourne.

6. Room reservation panels

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Room reservation panels located in various buildings across campus.

A Luddite would come and smash these to pieces with a hammer, even though half of them don’t ever seem to work. In my experience, most Warwick students seem to ignore them anyway. We don’t seem to trust them. Someone waiting outside my French seminar on the third floor of the FAB will see on the panel that the room is occupied.

And yet, at fifty-seven minutes past the hour, I can rely on seeing the awkwardly crouched form of an impatient third-year student trying to see below the opaque glass, so they can find some seated respite after that long lift journey they’ve taken from the ground floor, in which they have walked no more than ten yards.

7. Supermarket prices

My inner northerner was outraged the first time I had to pay £6.35 for a single box of Sudafed at the Co-op on Campus. In Victorian times a cask of medicine cost a single shilling – twelve pence (today, a shilling is equivalent to £5). And no, I am not still sour about it.

On a separate note, why do Warwick students resolutely queue round the entire shop for the self-check-out machines, when there is always a far lesser queue at the counters? I suppose it is because that would mean interacting with another human-being, which for our generation is something to be avoided if possible.

8. Royal Leamington Spa

On a recent pub crawl, I visited the Satchwell Arms on the Upper Parade of Leamington High Street – or Spoons, as most of you will know it. I am fully aware that to have conducted research about the Georgian Mayor of Leamington Benjamin Satchwell during my visit is something only a history geek like me could have done.

Nevertheless, I wonder how Mr Satchwell would react to the development of his luxurious spa town. He may rest assured that his precedent for the founding of fine institutions lives on to this day, as one who has ever frequented Kelsey’s Bar can attest. He can also be safe in the knowledge that the bandstand on the green outside Jephson Gardens has found a worthy purpose at the sight of many an embarrassing circle.

9. E-scooters and bike hire

A rack of E-scooters and bikes for hire outside the Faculty of Arts Building.

You aren’t a Warwick student if you haven’t almost been run over by one of those turquoise E-scooters available for hire across campus. They come flying round that blind bend between the Junction Building and Oculus. For a naïve Victorian bumpkin, it would be a real-life game of Crossy Road, just as it is for us today. And of course, the child wouldn’t get that reference either.

10. The University interchange

A skeletal Victorian child would simply be crushed in the savage human rugby-scrum that takes place at the U1 Bus Stop at the interchange every evening. Widespread motorbus use didn’t come to the UK until 1896, so the double-decker Stagecoach monsters we students scramble for would be scary enough.

R.I.P you poor little Victorian urchin. Warwick life just isn’t for you!

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