HOW do you run a school with classes scattered around 19 sites?

That was the dilemma facing John Henry Brookes, after whom Oxford Brookes University is named.

Astonishingly, the head of the Oxford School of Technology, Arts and Commerce at first kept control of his sprawling empire by bike.

Later, he progressed to a moped, and then city education officials suggested he should perhaps have a car.

They generously bought him a Wolseley.

The school was based in Church Street, St Ebbe’s, but occupied premises all over the city, including a disused factory, rooms above a garage and church halls.

Few present-day students probably know of Mr Brookes, but he made a huge contribution to the city as an artist, craftsman, teacher and educationalist, laying the foundations for Oxford’s second university.

Mr Brookes, born in Northampton in 1891, became head of the School of Art, in St Ebbe’s, in 1928.

Six years later, he took charge of the expanded School of Technology, Arts and Commerce, with 12 full-time staff and more than 1,700 students.

Under him, despite the 1930s’ Depression and the Second World War, the school made rapid progress but it was clear that it could not operate effectively on 19 scattered sites.

The Morrell brewery family offered 33 acres at the top of Headington Hill for new buildings.

When the city council rejected the plans, there was a public outcry.

Revised plans were eventually approved and building work started in 1953, Lord Nuffield laid the foundation stone a year later and the first parts of Oxford College of Technology opened in 1956, the year Mr Brookes retired.

The Duke of Edinburgh officially opened the new college in 1963.

It became Oxford Polytechnic in 1970 and Oxford Brookes University in 1992.

Mr Brookes, who was awarded the OBE in 1953, was a member of many Oxford business and community organisations and in retirement, contributed drawings of picturesque county scenes to our sister paper, The Oxford Times.

He died in 1975, but the legacy of his valuable 28-year contribution to education in the city lives on.

A lecture, entitled Mr Brookes – The Unsung Hero, will be given by Bryan Brown, an honorary graduate of the university, in the Lloyd Lecture Theatre, at the Headington campus on Wednesday at 6pm. Admission is free.