Rochester Building Image Gallery

An aerial view of the Science Site taken before the Rochester Building was constructed. The West Building (Geography), to the top right of the photo, began construction in 1952 and behind it, where the Rochester Building stands now, lay only fields of hay. Physics was based in the Dawson Building, with some teaching still taking place in temporary hut structures shown here.

Construction began toward the end of the 1950s on a new dedicated building for Physics, named after George Rochester who had more than a hand in the design. By the winter of 1959 the Woodside end of the building had been constructed and work continued on the foundations of the main portion of the building.

In May 1960 construction was well underway on the main part of the Rochester Building

By the mid-1960s Durham University's science site was taking shape, with the Rochester Building now complete along with the Christopherson Building (seen in the background, named after Sir Derman Christopherson, noted engineer and VC of Durham between 1960 and 1979) which housed the new Engineering department. The teaching of Engineering at Durham had been established in 1837, also in part by Temple Chevallier, but had moved to Newcastle during the merger of the institutions before being re-instated at Durham in 1965.

HRH Prince Philip, The Duke of Edinburgh visited the Department shortly after the building opened.

The entrance lobby of the Rochester Building, looking through to the Ph8 Lecture Theatre at the back, had a clean and modern look befitting the 1960s style, and remains largely unchanged to this day.

The building was equipped with workshops for Mechanical Engineering....

.....and Electronic Engineering, staffed with highly skilled technicians producing equipment and machinery that would support the teaching and research of the department.

State of the art telescopes housed in domes would be installed on the roof.

1st year students undertaking laboratory study in the 1960s

The Ph8 lecture theatre hosting the annual Christmas Lecture - this one from 1975.

Extensively equipped laboratories were fitted out with the latest equipment, electronic measurement and analytical devices - much of which was cumbersome. This vertical spectrograph, housed in what would later be named the Wolfendale Wing, spanned 3 floors.

As the department expanded, more office and study space was needed. An initial (low cost) solution was to utilise the roof to add an extra floor of offices and small study rooms - nicknamed the 'shanty town'. In 1991 a small extension was built on to the rear of the Rochester Building, adding to development of Materials Physics, which houses the Photonics Materials Centre and Thin-film deposition and characterisation labs.

Advances in teaching, learning and technology meant less need for very large-scale machinery and lab space. The Wolfendale Wing was also remodelled early in the 1990s - previously one enormous space, it was divided into smaller labs and offices over 3 floors that would later house the Biophysical Sciences Institute, Centre for Advanced Instrumentation and Gamma Ray Astronomy group.

Later in the early 2000s construction began on a further, innovative and exciting building to adjoin the Rochester: the Ogden Centre for Fundamental Physics. This would house the Institute for Particle Physics Phenomenology and The Institute for Computational Cosmology. Their world-class research led to international advances in the most fundamental building-blocks of matter, on the one hand, and the evolution of the Universe, on the other and the building represented an additional investment of about 20 million pounds in science in the region.

Then Prime Minister and MP for Sedgefield, the Rt. Hon. Tony Blair MP arrives to open the Ogden East building

Continuing to evolve and innovate over time, today the Rochester Building is still the main building for the department and houses modern state-of the art laboratories and is home to an impressive number of Professors, Research Centres and Institutes. These undergrads doing laboratory study look very different to their 1960s counterparts.

The study of astronomy continues to be world-class....

....as does the calibre of teaching and teaching facilities, with newly refurbished lecture theatres equipped with the latest AV and IT equipment. Our student numbers and diversity make us a truly international department.