The stunningly beautiful main building for the City University of London main campus at Islington features a large relief panel called "Science and Agriculture" over the main doors.
The panel is dated 1873, and is a whirl of activity, framed with putti who frame a lyre (left side) and a shield with the symbols of drama and comedy (right side). On the left side, figures busy themselves with scientific pursuits, using scientific instruments and studying chemistry. Figures in the background are swinging a hammer, presumably making something.
On the right side, representing Agriculture, a nude woman is surrounded by shepherds and sheep. The ground is littered with cornucopias filled with produce.
From British History Online: (
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"City University campus
¶City University originated in the 1890s as the Northampton Institute, established to provide technical education and recreation for Clerkenwell's young artisan population. Special attention was given to skills needed by locally indigenous manufacturing industries, and the institute soon gained a reputation for training in engineering. Brought under the purview of the London County Council, it became the Northampton Polytechnic Institute in 1906 and the Northampton College of Advanced Technology in 1957. Following the recommendations of the Robbins Report on higher education it was granted university status in 1966. The main campus consists of the original Northampton Institute building of 1894–8, latterly known as College Building, which faces St John Street, and extensions ranging eastwards to Goswell Road, added in 1966–74. Together these university buildings occupy the entire block between Northampton Square, Wyclif Street and Ashby Street to the south, and Spencer Street to the north. Various outlying University buildings are treated in other chapters. Student numbers have risen from 754 attending the first session's evening classes, to a full-time roll of about 13,000.
Northampton Institute (College Building)
¶The origins of the Northampton Institute lie in the 1880s, with the convergence of efforts to bring improvements to the Northampton estate and the movement to endow polytechnics in London. Plans for a polytechnic in Clerkenwell, to address the needs of the local clock- and watchmaking industries, and to provide technical education, physical training and recreation for young men and women of the area's poorer classes, drew on the precedents of Quintin Hogg's Polytechnic in Regent Street and Silvanus Thompson's Finsbury Technical College. They were resolved in 1891 with the establishment of the Northampton Institute and its unification with the Birkbeck Institute and the City of London College as the City Polytechnic. Funding came from the City Parochial Foundation, which had been set up in 1883 to make just such use of monies bequeathed to City parishes, through 'schemes' prepared by the Charity Commissioners, as well as from a tax on spirits ('whisky money') that was hypothecated to technical education, and donations from the Skinners' and Saddlers' Companies.
"The Institute was built of Suffolk red brick, with Bath stone dressings, and steel-truss roofs under green Westmorland slates (Ill. 435). The main entrance is within the central tower, under a neo-Renaissance frieze by the sculptor Paul Raphael Montford (Ill. 436). Figures represent Science and Agriculture, with attributes of these 'useful arts'. Attached to the top of the tower, an inventive Baroque composition, is one of London's more notable public clocks, here a more than usually significant feature. It was supplied by E. Dent & Co. Ltd, the makers of the 'Big Ben' clock, and five large clock bells in the belfry were made by John Warner & Sons. The original oak case and bracket were dismantled in 1939 and the case was replaced in 1950–1."