CLAIMS that something is ‘unique’ are often inaccurate or exaggerated.

Retired academic Bob Owen’s suggests that Huddersfield Technical – or Teacher – Training College, or Huddersfield College of Education (Technical), or simply ‘Holly Bank’, was unique.

The assertion, this time, is well supported by fact.

Bob, who lives in Almondbury, was first a part-time student (1968-70) there, then a principal lecturer (1972-77) in production management.

He strongly feels the college’s chequered and bizarre history and its unfortunate merger with the Polytechnic have meant it has not been properly appreciated for what it achieved.

“Largely due to the influence of its extraordinary director, Alexander MacLennan, the college was renowned right across the country and indeed round the world,” said Bob.

“It took about 300 students a year and trained them to be technical teachers in further education.

“But none of those students was younger than 25. MacLennan believed you needed to be completely committed and aware of the choice you were making in coming for teacher training at Holly Bank.

“Many educationists distrusted the place because we had no formal examinations, just continuous assessment before accreditation from Leeds University, which was an idea a bit before its time.

“Yet MacLennan established 15 extramural centres all over the East of England and spread the message about technical education personally in 50 different countries.

“He was an extraordinary powerhouse of energy and ideas.”

A measure of Holly Bank’s success was that at least 15 of its former teaching staff went on to become college principals.

One student, David Blunkett, went on to become Labour’s secretary of state for education in the 1997 Blair Cabinet.

Holly Bank’s story began in 1947, when the government responded to an urgent need to train teachers in technical subjects following the depletions of the Second World War.

There were three other technical colleges doing similar work, but none chose the continuous assessment route, and none maintained the ‘over-25’ entrance rules for so long.

Holly Bank’s campus was established in 1956, and survived independently until 1974, when it merged first with Oastler College, then with the Polytechnic to form the Polytechnic’s Faculty of Education.

But Holly Bank failed to get representation on the Polytechnic’s governing body, despite a High Court action, which meant that its peculiar but highly successful procedures were absorbed.

MacLennan quietly walked away from the college in 1974 and Bob Owen, by then the Polytechnic’s principal lecturer in management and business studies, left in 1978, for a lecturing job at the Dewsbury and Batley Technical and Art College where he later became an associate director.

Bob retired in 1992, and has since written an autobiography focusing on his impoverished childhood in South Shields, the history of the Tyneside engineering company Reyrolle, and the story of Geordie sports all-rounder Malcolm Scott, whom Bob helped with his autobiography in 2009.

Bob’s latest book charts the rise and fall of Holly Bank, its achievements, peculiarities and personalities with gentle humour and considerable perception.

“During my 42 years of industrial and educational experience nothing compared to my halcyon days at Holly Bank,” he writes.

“Such was the unique experience I believe it should not go unrecorded.”

The book Memories Of Holly Bank is available from Bob at £7.95. Orders can be placed on (01484) 533041.