Distance: just under 3.5 miles

Difficulty of the Terrain: medium

Get the route: via Ordnance Survey Maps

Walk from the central Warwickshire town of Kenilworth along greenways and across fields to the University of Warwick’s modernist and post-modern campus on the edge of Coventry.

The Story

The Walk

Getting Back

Dialectics on Gibbet Hill

Established in 1965 the University of Warwick is the fifth oldest university in the Midlands region. Albeit unlike some of its “newer” counterparts it was a completely new establishment, amongst the last of the early 1960s wave of greenfield “plate glass” universities, as opposed to having grown out of older adult education institutions.

In the mid-20th Century, Coventry, then a booming city at the heart of the UK’s car making and other mechanical engineering industries, was keen to establish a university in its city centre.

The county of Warwickshire on the other hand saw no need for a new university. Their argument was that Warwickshire – of which Coventry was then a ceremonial component – already had a university at Birmingham and did not need another. 

Amidst the drive from the late 1950s for the construction of new universities their wrangling was resolved by the decision to purchase a large tract of land straddling the boundary between Coventry and Warwickshire.

Since the 1960s the student body at Warwick has grown from a couple of thousand to around 27,000. The total staff contingent numbers around 7,000. When its various strands of income are added up the University’s budget is around £700million a year. This makes it one of Coventry and Warwickshires’ largest employers. In common with the Midland’s other universities Warwick and its community of staff and students are major social actors in their chunk of the region.

On one hand the University of Warwick has a conservative reputation, or at least a tendency to stick close to established power. Jack Butterworth, the first vice chancellor was controversial throughout his long tenure for his keenness – then unusual within higher education – to seek to commercialise research and build partnerships with business. This made him, and by extension Warwick, a favourite of Margaret Thatcher at a time when universities were being heavily criticised by many Conservative politicians and seeing their funding cut.

More recently the University was a favourite of the New Labour government amidst their drive to simultaneously grow student enrolment and make universities more like businesses. This might have owed something to the fact several Coventry and east Birmingham MPs held education and science briefs under New Labour. But it also is testimony to Warwick’s historic ties to industry and relative receptiveness to the third way’s neoliberalism with a human face. In return the University was shown off to Bill Clinton when he visited the UK in late 2000. As well as being chosen to host the conference which led to the Warwick Agreement in 2004, that secured affiliated trade union back for the Labour Party’s highly authoritarian 2005 manifesto in exchange for some minor corporate governance and social reforms. Towards the end of the New Labour era Carrie Johnson studied Drama and History of Art at Warwick, illustration that the institution’s ties to the powerful continue – albeit in the form of alumni – well into the post-Brexit era.

The obverse of this is that whilst Warwick’s students have never been as restive as those at its plateglass peers Sussex and Essex, or for that matter redbrick universities with vaguely radical credentials like UCL or Leeds, there is a strong tradition of left-wing activism at the University.

This can be traced back to the Warwick Occupation and Files Scandal of 1970. Compared to 1968, 1969 and several flash points during the 1970s, 1970 was not an especially momentous year for student activism in Britain. However, at Warwick protests to secure better student facilities on the half built campus, spiralled into an occupation which briefly became a media sensation.

That the University of Warwick had prioritised the completion of its master plan over space and services for staff and students will surprise no one that has ever worked or studied at a university. Indeed in many cases – including the Paris May of 1968 – it was partially or poorly completed university campuses which sparked much of the student unrest of the late 1960s and 1970s. 

What the Warwick Occupation in February 1970 uncovered was a collection of files in the University’s Senate House – then the main central administration building – which pointed to systematic surveillance of staff and students deemed unruly or potentially subversive by the University’s management. 

The files uncovered ranged from the relatively trivial, such as unflattering references and correspondence from school teachers relating to sixth formers applying for places at Warwick. To the far more serious, documents which showed the extent to which the car companies which had supported the University’s foundation were engaged in the surveillance of trade unionists in their factories, and that some of these practices had been extended to the monitoring of university staff and visiting lecturers. 

With the support of the social historian Edward Thompson, who was briefly employed at Warwick, the student activists published a book Warwick University Ltd. (which is still in print) that detailed the background to the files that they uncovered and their contents. 

Jack Butterworth, the University’s Vice Chancellor from foundation in 1965 until 1985 – an unusually long tenure – was suspicious of any form of collective organisation. He became a Conservative Party member of the House of Lords in 1990. As such he was keen in the first half of his stint as Vice Chancellor to try and keep the University of Warwick’s Students’ Union relatively disempowered and marginal in student life. 

Unlike at many universities in the UK the university refused support for the construction of an independent students’ union building, pointing students instead towards the university’s own limited social spaces. Jack Butterworth purportedly declared “there will never be a students’ union building at the University of Warwick”.

Needless to say, in 1974 the University after years of student protests did sign a contract for the construction of a students’ union building (one of the UK’s better ones, distinctive, functional, nicely finished). It opened in 1975. If you know the right place to look in its central atrium, designed for the hosting of bands, day-to-day student socialising, and all manner of markets and fairs, you will see the following etching into the building’s concrete “there will never be a students’ union building at the University of Warwick – Jack Butterworth, Vice Chancellor”.

Indeed, in recent decades the University of Warwick’s Students’ Union has been notable for resisting the often aggressive trend towards depoliticisation which has been apparent on other UK campuses since the 2000s, and which has accelerated since the early 2010s.

This can be seen on the most basic level in the fact that it is one of the few campuses – especially outside of the centre of a major urban area – where minor Marxist political parties regularly prop up a pasting table and try and get passers by to stop and talk, buy a paper, sign a petition. On a more substantive level it can be seen in the fact that Warwick had a late flowering, but quite substantial, campus based movement against fees and marketisation in the mid-2010s. Plus the fact that in 2019 the Student Unions’ own liberation campaigns occupied the students’ union to protest against aspects of the union’s culture and policies which replicated and produced rascism and other forms of discrimination.

Even more autonomously, in 2019 a WhatsApp chat scandal led to mass on campus protests by a broad swathe of the student body and some sympathetic staff. Perhaps it is the focus of student life at Warwick on the campus which means that students are so engaged with what happens there? Either way it is clear that despite strong and sustained trends towards the marketisation and atomisation of university life, it is clear that there are strong and countervailing tendencies promoting collectivism and solidarity at Warwick.

On a final note Warwick’s most interesting contribution to intellectual life to date, occurred in the 1990s, a decade which was in many ways a bit of a wilderness for interesting new thought. In 1995 junior academic staff in the Philosophy Department and a cluster of postgraduate students, including the critic, popular continental philosopher, and Midlander Mark Fisher, launched the Cybernetic Culture Research Unit (CCRU). Initially led by continental philosophy lecturer Nick Land, and the sociologist and critic Sadie Plant (a refugee from the late period Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies at the University of Birmingham), the CCRU was ostensibly established to explore the emerging culture of the internet.

However, as Sadie Plant has reflected “if the University of Warwick thought it was getting internet cultural studies [they were wrong]”. Rather the CCRU embarked on a strange voyage, far outside the acceptable parameters of academia into the realms of accelerationism, nihilism, techno music, rave culture, cyberpunk and the copious use of amphetamines and psychedelic drugs. Where most academic research centres host invite only workshops, mannered occasional public symposia, and soporific conferences the CCRU hosted multiday raves, performance art events and DJ sessions.

Unsurprisingly this rapidly became too much for the University of Warwick. From 1996 onwards the CCRU steadily moved out of academia’s orbit, eventually becoming based above a branch of the Body Shop in central Leamington Spa. It had ceased to exit by 2003, its texts and other items of intellectual production now have a cult status. Today it seems vanishingly unlikely that a comparable entity could emerge from within academia, making the CCRU a fascinating item from a very different era, albeit one less than 30 years ago.

The CCRU’s legacy was celebrated at the 2021 Coventry Biennial. Which was appropriate as it is in the work of the curator and writer Kodwo Eshun, multimedia artists The Otolith Group, publishers Urbanomics, the writings of Mark Fisher, and the dark continuing career of Nick Nick as a philosopher of the dark enlightenment and neo-reaction that the legacy of the CCRU lives on. Less within the academy as within the arts, media and the more ostensibly intellectual reaches of popular culture.

A fitting intellectual achievement for a university like Warwick, established at the high point of post-war mass culture, a time starkly different to our own.      

The Walk

Get the route: via Ordnance Survey Maps

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From either Kenilworth Railway Station or the bus stop in the town centre known as Kenilworth Shops walk in the direction of the entrance off Castle Road to Kenilworth Castle.

Once you reach the turning for the castle ruin keep on walking straight down the road ahead of you, running downhill.

At the bottom of the hill you come to a bridge.

On the far side of the bridge turn right and enter the Abbey Fields park.

Follow the path to the right, then straight as it runs past a lake.

Once past the lake keep walking straight ahead along a desire line type path across grass.

You soon come to a gap in a wall beyond.

Having passed through the wall cross the grass heading around some children’s play equipment and passing some of the ruins of the former Kenilworth Abbey.

Follow a path heading left towards a church.

Just prior to reaching it, turn right and walk down a tree lined path towards the road beyond.

Once at the road, cross over to the far side.

Then head to the right for a short distance.

Presently on your left you come to a path leading through trees, beside a stream.

Head left on this path and follow it for some distance as it weaves along beside the stream and next to estates of houses constructed in the last quarter of a century or so.

After some distance you come to a road with a row of Victorian terraces opposite.

Here, turn left and walk a short distance.

Soon opposite you, you see a road with more terraces on it.

Cross the road and head down here.

Quickly it turns into a car free path for walkers and push bike cyclists.

Then you reach another main road.

Turn left here and walk along the pavement a short distance.

Coming to a side road on your left turn down it.

Then right.

At the bottom of the road you come to a metal bridge leading across a stream into woodland.

Cross the bridge and head into the woodland.

Soon you come to a junction. Here keep on right remaining on the paved path.

After a short distance the path heads to the left following the railway line linking Kenilworth and Leamington Spa to Coventry.

This is before the path branches off following the line of a disused railway.

On the other side of the bridge continue a short distance further along the straight former railway line path.

Presently on your right there is a signpost pointing out into open fields. The signpost points towards the University of Warwick.

Follow the path as it runs across fields.

At the time of writing there was a slight diversion on the route, albeit it very clear to follow, to the left around the earthworks for HS2.

Presumably the exact location of the diversion will change over the course of the works between now and whenever the railway is finished (probably not 2026 as planned…). But it is good to see that HS2 are putting a fair bit of effort into keeping the path open.

Once you have passed through the HS2 diversion the tops of buildings on the University of Warwick campus are very visible on the horizon.

Follow the path as it runs across fields, wild flower meadows and hedgerows.

Soon you come to a quiet country lane which marks the boundary between farmland and the University of Warwick’s campus.

Follow the path for a short distance on the far side.

You reach a wooden bridge and on the far side of the bridge there is the University’s sports pitches.

Follow the path around and up a slightly sloping hill with sports pitches on either side.

At the top by a sports pavilion turn left onto a road.

Walk along the side of the road for a short distance heading left.

Upon reaching a crossing point crossover, then keep heading left.

Soon on your right there is a gap onto a lane.

Head right through this gap and walk past a gate onto a green lane type path lined with hedgerows.

This comes out onto a meadow, which you cross.

On your left stand a pair of oxidised dinosaur sculptures, part of the campus art collection, which were created – believe it or not – by the Chapman Brothers.

Keep on walking around the edge of the meadow.

At the far side you reach a path, which you keep on the left hand fork of.

The path leads out to one of the main roads running through the University campus opposite the Social Sciences Building.

Upon reaching it, turn right.

This leads a short way uphill to the University’s Warwick Arts Centre and the bus interchange.

This is where the walk ends.

Getting Back

From the University of Warwick bus interchange there is a wide array of services to various parts of Coventry and back towards Kenilworth and Leamington Spa. National Express 11 goes back through Kenilworth towards Leamington Spa, as well as running into central Coventry. The National Express X12 also runs into Coventry albeit every 12 minutes, rather than 20 like the 11, and is also much quicker. Both the 11 and the X12 go past Coventry Railway Station which has trains back towards Kenilworth and Leamington Spa, as well as services north towards Birmingham and the West Midlands, towards Nuneaton, and also south towards Rugby, Northampton, Milton Keynes, London and other parts of South East England.