A NEW era for higher education has begun in Winchester after the city's King Alfred's College formally became a university yesterday.
Now called University College Winchester, the move means the 160-year-old college can now award it's own degrees separate from Southampton University.
It also marks the culmination of many years of hard work by staff at the Sparkford Road institution, who have been calling for the college to get university status for many years.
As the official ceremony to mark the change got underway yesterday afternoon, hundreds of people stopped to stare as a robed procession marking the change wove it's way up Winchester High Street to the sound of a moot horn - blown when the college opened in 1840.
For more pictures and a round-up of yesterday's ceremony, see tomorrow's Winchester edition of the Daily Echo.
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