An unsung education hero

Many famous names are forever associated with Oxford. Yet, despite having one of the city’s two universities named after him, John Henry Brookes is not one of them.

Never mind visitors to the city, you would be hard pressed to find many locals who could tell you much about the man who inspired the creation of Oxford Brookes University, having shaped the education of thousands.

Our lack of awareness of JHB, as he was known to friends (he was Jack to his family) always irked Bryan Brown, the man who first recommended the name and developed the brand identity for Oxford Brookes University, back in 1992, when Oxford Polytechnic became a university.

Since then he has been campaigning to reassert John Henry Brookes’s fading legacy. And now He has produced the first biography of the modern founder of Oxford Brookes University, who arrived in Oxford in 1928 as the newly appointed head of the modest Oxford School of Art, but went on to shape the city’s education in a way, he argues, is unparalleled in British education.

In part, Mr Brown was driven by his desire to ensure proper recognition for an unsung hero, “a renaissance man”, who has not received his due.

But it is also something of a personal tribute. For Mr Brown, born in Oxford and a pupil at Cheney School from 1958 to 1965, which was founded by Brookes, believes he, like thousands of others, is indebted to this great educationalist.

Mr Brown, 68, went on to practise design, as well as an alumnus of Brookes University, and an honorary fellow.

“JHB was an influence on my own life,” he now reflects. “But it was not until 1992, the time Oxford gained its second university, and over the past few years researching his life, that I realised just how significant that influence has been.”

JHB was born during the Victorian era in 1891 and raised in the East Midlands. During his teenage years he was greatly influenced by William Morris, the great Oxford-educated artist and socialist visionary, and the Arts and Crafts Movement, arguably the most important and influential artistic and social movement to emerge from England for 250 years.

He learnt and practised craft skills at the Guild of Handicrafts in Chipping Campden and trained as a teacher in Leicester.

He arrived at the Oxford School of Art aged 37. With two staff and 90 students, the institution he was to lead had grown little since its foundation in 1865, with teaching mostly done in the evenings so people could attend at the end of the working day.

Brookes would later described his time in developing the college in Oxford as “the lean years”.

In his book, Mr Brown gives a picture of the city awaiting him.

“The economy and politics of Oxford had been dominated by its university for centuries. Although some members of the University of Oxford understood and supported the need for vocational education for local people, the dominant social culture of that great institution did not. This lack of support had greatly impaired the progress of education in the city for those past school-leaving age.”

Car manufacturing had begun but the city, like the rest of Britain, was witnessing the beginnings of the Great Depression. Despite the dire economy and limited support from central and local government, Brookes set set up new courses and departmentsacross the city.

For Mr Brown, Brookes was behind two events that were “essentially the foundation of much of the education in Oxford today”.

First was the creation of Southfield School, now Oxford Spires Academy, which meant pupils from St Ebbes moved to a new building in the east of the city. This enabled the full merger of the Oxford City Technical School and the Oxford School of Art, which would become Oxford College of Technology and later Oxford Polytechnic.

Then, to complement the creation of Southfield School, he formed a junior technical school, which 20 years later became Cheney School.

So by the time he retired in 1956, Brookes could claim credit for masterminding the formative years of two schools as well as the Oxford College of Further Education, now known as City of Oxford College.

He had also laid the foundations for the Oxford College of Technology to grow ultimately into a university, with most of the principal activities of the university of the 21st century already established.

When the government decided in the early 1990s to give polytechnics university status, the choice of a new name proved a challenge, given there was a global university brand on the doorstep.

Having Oxford in the title was viewed as indisputable, with the governors offering a magnum of Champagne for the best suggestion. Many names were suggested before the decision was taken to appoint Mr Brown’s company, Marketplace Design, to pitch the name and create a corporate visual identity.

Previous names suggested included Headington, Cherwell, Isis and Oxfordshire. Another suggestion was taking the name, and perhaps sponsorship, of the later disgraced resident of Headington Hill Hall, Robert Maxwell, before the idea of going for a living person was wisely dropped.

Mr Brown eventually came up with two names, Brookes and the car maker and great Oxford philanthropist William Morris. Oxford Brookes University, to his delight, was the name agreed upon.

“I’m often asked what JHB would have made of the decision,” Mr Brown told me. “I am sure that JHB would have been surprised, flattered and very proud.

“If you look at the other new universities, many are named after benefactors. I think we are the only one who went for the university’s spiritual founder."

A man of many gifts, Brookes could paint and draw as well as being a talented silversmith and stone carver, with a prodigious output in retirement. In 1957, The Oxford Times commissioned him to produce drawings for its leader page. They were of village, town and city streets, churches and country views and buildings around the city. He continued to produce them for 15 years, with his 100th drawing of Holywell Street published in 1968.

Mr Brown frankly admits that having successfully recommended that the new university should take JHB’s name, he became tired of being asked why it was called Brookes. The book presents a lengthy answer, revealing a man whose commitment to providing education for working class people, at a time when there were precious few opportunities, was wedded to a belief in the value of teaching technological and vocational subjects. No doubt JHB would be delighted to find that engineering, planning and archaeology are specialisms of Brookes.

“I believe that there is not a single Formula One team that does not have an engineer from Brookes", said Mr Brown.

“For me his ideas and values are embedded in its DNA. "Many people say education should be for life but John Henry Brookes, believed in ‘education for livelihood’.”

An ethos the university, now marking the 150th anniversary of its founding as the Oxford School of Art in 1865, still puts at the core of its work.