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Report from John Fray (NUJ) GFTU Representative on Ruskin Governors

Ruskin College has just held its topping out ceremony on the new extension now being built on their Headington Hall site. 
It is all change for the college with the new build, due to be completed in September 2012, Headington will become Ruskin’s new home. The move away from Oxford city center to their larger Ruskin Hall/Stoke site in Old Headington comes after the college sold its old site in Walton Street to Oxford University’s Exeter College .
 
At Headington the 1960s Tawney Hall (Refectory wing and kitchens)have been demolished to make way for the redevelopment when workstarted on the Headington site in the spring of 2010. The refurbished Rookery will provide academic modern accommodation and ancillary facilities.The plans include a new library (to be named after former Prime Minister Jim Callaghan) and a new teaching area next to the Rookery and now already in use, after many years of lobbying by the GFTU for student accomodation improvements, the short stay study rooms have all been updated with ensuite installed in every room.
 
The topping out ceremony origins, performed by Ruskin’s Principal Professor Audrey Mullender and Leadbitter the builders, goes back centuries, it honours the safe working to date, the work still to be completed and bestows good luck on the rest of the construction and for good measure the future residents. So it is no bad thing.