Work to tear down a landmark building affectionately known as the 'chemistry tower' is set to begin. It was revealed last October that Bangor University's long serving Alun Roberts Building, which has towered over the city's skyline for decades, was set to be demolished.
After months of planning, the initial work to tear the structure down has now begun. The iconic building has long been known to generations of students and Bangor residents as the 'Chemistry Tower' thanks to its role as the university's Chemistry department.
Most recently the building housed several different departments from the university, including the School of Natural Sciences, the Biocomposites Centre and the Confucius Institute. It also played a pivotal role during the pandemic, playing host to the Covid-19 waste water research project which proved flying restrictions during the outbreak to be near a total failure.
However, us of the building began dwindling in 2019 when the university decided to cut its Chemistry undergraduate and postgraduate courses in a bid to save money. No further students were taken in the 2019-2020 academic year, with all current students either having finished their education or moved on to other locations by 2022.
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Situated in the heart of Bangor, Gwynedd, the building was constructed in the late 1960s. An article in the Liverpool Daily Post in 1962 showed an architect's impressions of the new department buildings being proposed at the time.
Referred to as 'defiantly twentieth century', the buildings were set to look modernistic compared to the existing main arts building, these designs though bore little resemblance to what was eventually built.
At the time the article shows that the university intended to spend around £1.35 million on the project over five years, with hopes that by 1967 the university would be catering to a student population of 2,000. By today's standards that's around £31.5 million, while the university now caters for over 10,000 students.
![Snippet from the Liverpool Daily Post 1962.](https://i2-prod.dailypost.co.uk/incoming/article26894759.ece/ALTERNATES/s615b/0_Snippet-from-the-Liverpool-Daily-Post-1962.jpg)
Once built the current tower was named after Alun Roberts, a Professor of Agricultural Botany back when the university was still known as the University College of North Wales. Originally it housed not all the Chemistry department, but the Maths department as well.
A post from the time described the new building as: "The new Chemistry building, the upper floors of which are occupied by the Mathematics department pending the erection of a new Physics and Mathematics building, was occupied in 1965, but will not be finally completed until a second lecture theatre and more lecturers' and research rooms are added at a later stage. It consists of a tower block of eleven floors, together with a two-storey wing containing the lecture theatre and the central boiler house, which will ultimately serve the whole site."
"As in the Animal Nutrition building, the lines and detail of the structure are simple. The vertical members of the reinforced concrete frame have been exposed externally and emphasised by colouring, and curtain walling, glazed with coloured glass to cill levels and with clear glass above on each floor, has been used to clad the facades between the structural columns. The vertical lines are thus strengthened, but the effect is marred by the proportions of the tower, which despite its great height appears somewhat squat."
"From the architectural point of view it is impossible to regard the Deiniol Road science buildings with much satisfaction. The site, a narrow strip between the main road and a steep hillside, is not a good one, and it has been developed in piecemeal fashion to meet immediate needs. The latest addition, the Chemistry tower block, is conspicuously out of scale with its neighbours. The firm of architects employed since the war cannot be blamed for the situation; they have carried out the wishes of the College, and the College has been unable to foresee for more than a few years ahead what money will be available for building."
"A scheme has been drawn up for the redevelopment of the site, involving the replacement of one-storey buildings by tall blocks and the consequent release of more space for circulation and landscaping. The realisation of such a scheme could make the area considerably more attractive."
Do you have any memories of the old Chemistry Tower? Share them with us in the comments.
By 1967 the Department of Chemistry was advertising jobs for young men and women to be Junior Technicians at the school, accepting candidates between the ages of 16 and 21 with four 'O' Levels with one in Chemistry and least one other in another science. A salary for the role would have varied between £326 at 16 and £569 by 23.
Little is recorded about the Chemistry Tower in the intervening years, other than it continued to operate while many of the buildings around it were retired, such as the former Students Union and Time nightclub, which stood just a short distance away where Pontio now is, along with many of the older buildings around it being phased out.
The site last hit the headlines back in 2016 when an unplanned chemical reaction set off the buildings fire suppression system, though fortunately nobody was harmed. It has not yet been confirmed when demolition will be finished on the building.
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