Harper Adams University

Harper Adams University is a university located close to the village of Edgmond (near Newport), in Shropshire, England. It is the UK's leading specialist provider of higher education for the agri-food chain and rural sector.

History

Harper Adams opened in 1901 to six students after Thomas Harper Adams, a wealthy Shropshire gentleman farmer who had died in 1892, bequeathed the estate. Headworth Foulkes was the first principal of the College. In 1909 a specialist poultry husbandry was created.

Harper Adams remained open during the First World War, and in 1915 the first women were admitted into the college on wartime farm courses. Harper was the first institute to do so, and in 1916 women were admitted full-time onto a wide variety of courses. Approximately 200 staff and former students served in the forces in the war and 40 of the latter are known to have died. In their memory, the college's library was established on a permanent basis after a successful funds appeal in 1921. A board in the library listing the names (including those found in recent additional research) was dedicated in March 2015, crafted by Peter Nunn of the university estates department, while a new memorial garden was created outside the library.