of Lancashire County Council. The main buildings consisted of a main education block, four halls of residence (named Stanley, Clough, Lady Margaret and John Dalton), an Assembly Hall, a library, craft room, gymnasium, lecture theatres, classrooms and a music room.
Between 1939 and 1946, during the Second World War, the college was evacuated to Bingley in Yorkshire, and the Ormskirk site was requisitioned for use by the military.
The Durning Road premises were destroyed in a bombing raid on 17 November 1940, during the Liverpool Blitz, which killed 166 people.
Edge Hill became a mixed college, admitting its first male students in October 1959, when it had about 500 students in total. In 1963 the college recorded having 660 students and 59 members of staff.
The institution has since expanded, with further developments at Ormskirk and the absorption of the former Sefton School of Health Studies.
In 2005, Edge Hill was granted Taught Degree Awarding Powers by the Privy Council. On 18 May 2006 the institution became Edge Hill University and in August 2008 the university was granted the power to award research degrees.
== Campus ==
Edge Hill University is based on a 160-acre (650,000 m2) campus in Ormskirk, the administrative centre of West Lancashire. It is midway between Liverpool and the county town of Preston.
The university used to operate from the Woodlands campus based in Chorley, central Lancashire, where it offered continuing professional development programmes and part-time study. However, in recent years operations have been centralised back to the main University campus.
Most of the university's subjects and departments are based in specialist buildings developed since the 1990s: Faculty of Education, Faculty of Health and Social Care, Business School, BioSciences, GeoSciences, Creative Edge (Media and Social Sciences), Performing Arts, the Wilson Centre (Sport and Physical Activity) and Psychology. The Tech Hub was opened in 2016 by entrepreneur Sir Robin Saxby.
The university also operates a campus in …
