Alumni Magazine 2010:Layout 1 11/08/2010 11:31 Page 17
Farewell Colchester Avenue
Those were the days!
The new home for Cardiff College of Food Technology and Commerce opened its doors to students in September 1966, bristling with specialist facilities for the strong vocational programmes delivered here. National Diploma and City and Guilds students happily rubbed shoulders with Higher National Diploma (HND) and degree students. Dietetics was the first degree programme, with HNDs in catering, food science and technology and business studies, which gradually became the extensive portfolio of programmes offered today. 17
My first timetable comprised a cross-section of applied sciences bakery, catering, hairdressing and nursery nursing. Those of you familiar with Tom Sharpe’s book Wilt might have some insight into what it was like here, although some of the old gang made Sharpe’s characters look positively normal! The old Lesley Smith Restaurant on the ground floor was named after the first principal of the college who had been a baker. It then became Smith’s Restaurant and Coffee Shop, and ended life as the Print Studio. The first floor of B Block was known as the corridor of flour. Our lecture theatres were bakeries full of the
As UWIC’s Colchester Avenue campus closes its doors for the final time, Professor Eleri Jones looks back with nostalgia…
latest equipment, though one asbestos-filled oven could not be removed and remains incarcerated behind a wall in the back of B113. The wall of B114 was a display area for cakes decorated by students and staff, particularly Joyce Williams. Joyce became quite famous for her skills, making cakes for local and not-so-local dignitaries, including the Queen and Henry Kissinger! Much of the bakery equipment and skills has been transferred to the Food Industry Centre at Llandaff, as part of UWIC’s Cardiff School of Health Sciences. So many things had already disappeared over the years - the ‘flat’ where housekeeping was taught,
a dieticians’ kitchen, the Finnish sauna, a sewing room, two hairdressing salons (where Ken Picton honed his trade in the 1970s) and a beauty therapy salon. Gone too are the rows of typewriters for NCTJ (Journalism) students such as Michael Buerk and Sue Lawley. Cardiff College of Food Technology and Commerce enjoyed a very strong relationship with the City of Cardiff. It was seen as a centre of excellence and basked in the glory of its highachieving staff and students. It was also a very happy place to work and there was a strong sense of collegiality. Those of us who worked there are sad to say goodbye to all the
memories, but we look forward to the ‘new era’ in our new building at Llandaff.
If you would like to see the new facilities at Llandaff – either the Food Industry Centre or the School of Management Building – do get in touch! Email alumni@uwic.ac.uk or call the Alumni Office on 02920 201590.