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The Aston Webb building, Birmingham

Victoria Building tower, Liverpool

Firth Court, University of Sheffield

The main Entrance to Old College at the University of Wales Aberystwyth

Red Brick (or perhaps better, Redbrick) originally referred to the six "civic" British universities which were founded in the industrial cities of England in the Victorian era and which achieved university status before World War II. The modern term roughly equates to those members of the so-called Russell Group of universities founded between 1850 and 1960, although the terms are by no means mutually inclusive.

The civic university movement started in 1851 with Owens College, Manchester (now the University of Manchester), which became the founding college of the federal Victoria University in 1880 and attained university status when the federal university was dissolved in 1903.

The six civic universities were:^[1]

• University of Birmingham
• University of Bristol
• University of Leeds
• University of Liverpool
• University of Manchester
• University of Sheffield

These universities were distinguished by being non-collegiate institutions that admitted men without reference to religion or background and concentrated on imparting to their students "real-world" skills, often linked to engineering. In this sense, they owed their heritage to University College London and to the Humboldt University of Berlin, both of which emphasised practical knowledge over the academic sort. This focus on the practical also distinguished the "Red Brick" universities from the ancient English universities of Oxford and Cambridge and from the newer (although still pre-Victorian) University of Durham, collegiate institutions which concentrated on divinity, the liberal arts and imposed religious tests (e.g., assent to the Thirty-Nine Articles) on staff and students. Scotland's ancient universities (St Andrews, Glasgow, Aberdeen, and Edinburgh), usuallly grouped with Dundee (which was originally part of St Andrews - see below) were founded on a different basis.

The term "Red Brick" or "Redbrick" was first coined by a professor of Spanish (Edgar Allison Peers) at the University of Liverpool to describe these civic universities (under the pseudonym "Bruce Truscot" in his 1943 book Redbrick University).^[2][3] His reference was inspired by the fact that The Victoria Building at the University of Liverpool (which was designed by Alfred Waterhouse and completed in 1892) is built from a distinctive red pressed brick, with terracotta decorative dressings. On this basis, the University of Liverpool (which was itself originally part of the aforementioned Victoria University together with Owens College in Manchester) can be argued to be the "original" red brick university. With the Birmingham University Act receiving assent on 24 May 1900, the first red brick university to receive its Royal Charter was the University of Birmingham.

However, the term was to become more nebulous. The University of Reading, founded in the late 19th century as an extension college of Oxford, received its charter in 1926. Despite being the first university to be based on a self-contained campus, Reading is often classed as one of the civic universities and is therefore "Red Brick", as is Queen's University Belfast which became a civic university in 1908, having previously been established in 1845 as a university college of the Queen's University, Ireland (which was later renamed as Royal University of Ireland).

University College London itself, and colleges from the 19th and early 20th centuries which later achieved university status prior to 1963, are also sometimes described as "Red Brick"; this broader designation includes institutions such as the University of Exeter (originally an extension college of Cambridge), the University of Newcastle upon Tyne (originally King's College, Durham), and the Universities of Hull, Leicester, Nottingham and Southampton (until the 1950s, all were colleges with degrees being awarded by the University of London). The University of Dundee, formerly "University College Dundee", was founded in the late 19th century and then spent many years as a constituent college of the University of St Andrews, until it received its own charter - it has many features in common with the original "Red Brick" universities of large northern English cities, although it has other features it shares with the Scottish ancients.

The term "redbrick" is now also extended to cover the original constituent institutions of the University of Wales (Aberystwyth, Bangor, Swansea and Cardiff) and St David's College, Lampeter (originally independent, but now part of the University of Wales).

Keble College, Oxford is notable for being both a red-brick built college within the University of Oxford, and a "Red Brick"-style institution which places a similarly strong emphasis on engineering and sciences.

In 1963, the Robbins Report recommended expansion of the British university system, and the universities established after this report are often known as the "plate glass universities".

• Oxbridge
• University of Wales (the founding member of the federation are leading Research Universities in Wales as well as the United Kingdom}
• List of British universities
• Russell Group
• 1994 Group
• Plate glass universities
• New universities

1. ^ http://www.st-andrews.ac.uk/staff/ppd/Newstaffinduction/AhistoryoftheHEenvironment/
2. ^ Peers, Edgar Allison (1943). Redbrick University. 
3. ^ Peers, Edgar Allison (1996). Redbrick University Revisited. Liverpool University Press. ISBN 0853232598.