The Bedford campus has lots of green open spaces while being very close to Bedford town centre and local amenities. It boasts our Gateway building, a three-storey building that offers high-quality teaching spaces, informal learning spaces, lecture theatres and a new student services centre.
In the Campus Centre you can find both of the campus Theatres as well as the main campus Café while in the surrounding buildings you can find our Physical Education and Sport Science Centre which was used to train athletes in the 2012 Olympics, Teacher Education Centre, four dance studios, campus gym, our four-storey campus library and a newly refurbished Students' Union social space that holds a variety of student events such as pub quizzes, live music and various themed club nights.
The Gateway Building located at the entrance of the Bedford campus holds a wide range of facilities including the main reception, student information desk, a café on the ground floor, large lecture theatres as well as a range of study rooms & breakout spaces on all floors.
Part of the University's 'greening of the campus' initiative, the £25m investment in the Gateway includes a number of sustainable and low carbon technologies such as rainwater harvesting. The project team are aiming towards a BREEAM sustainability rating of 'excellent'.
The Bedford Campus Centre holds the large 280 seat professional theatre on the ground floor and the 80 seat studio theatre on the first floor as well as a box office just inside the entrance where students, staff and the wider community can get tickets for the variety of student performances that are held by our School of Media & Performance
Also on the ground floor is the main campus café which offers a wide variety of tasty food & drink and is a great social space for meeting friends and group working.
Our specialist labs give students a fantastic environment to develop their research skills and expertise, where a student can explore the biology of an elite athlete who could be performing simultaneously within the sports hall.
The state-of-the-art laboratories are purpose built for research and teaching in the fields of exercise and nutrition science. This includes specialised equipment and facilities for assessing human health risk and delivering exercise and diet interventions for health promotion.
The teacher education centre is set out over a number of blocks on campus containing realistic mock classrooms for students to learn and train within. As part of this our Forest School also provides the opportunity for teachers to be trained in outdoor learning and the educational benefits of outdoor play.
We have a long-established history in teacher training and education with over 500 partnerships with schools, colleges and other organisations.
The sports hall is an integral space in the School of Sport Science and Physical Activity, complementing the discipline leading Sport and Exercise Science and muscle cell and molecular biology laboratories, all co-located on the Bedford campus.
Alongside the large sports hall the campus is surrounded by sports fields and a multi-use games area for the University's Sport and Physical Education degree students.
The Bedford Campus Library set over four storeys offers students access to our extensive range of physical and digital resources with 300,000+ books & 80,000+ ebooks.
PCs are provided on each level for students to use offering access to a wide range of applications as well as access to group-work areas and presentation-practice rooms and a dedicated silent study floor.
Bedford is a riverside town with a mixture of lively traditional pubs and restaurants, shops and first-class sports facilities. The Corn Exchange in the town centre shows regular music and comedy gigs, plus there are museums, landscaped parks, and a cinema.
Bedford is well-placed with its main train station linking London and Brighton to the south and Leicester, Nottingham and Sheffield to the north.
The surrounding area has a wealth of parks and open spaces including Bedford Park near the Bedford campus which is ideal for walks, cricket, tennis and basketball. Slightly further afield are 206 acres of open country for lake and river walks, angling, wildlife and conservation areas.
Also close by is Woburn Abbey and Safari Park, and the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds (RSPB) nature reserve at Sandy.
Bedford campus is next to the A428 on the eastern side of Bedford (Polhill Avenue).
There are frequent trains, operated by Thameslink from London St Pancras International station - journey time about 50 minutes.
East Midlands Trains also run from London St Pancras International station - journey time about 40 minutes.
There are also direct trains from Leicester, Derby, Nottingham and Sheffield. Services to the West Midlands, Lancashire, and Scotland are via Milton Keynes.
The University runs a free shuttle bus for staff and students from Bedford train station to the campus.
Our Bedford Campus is very close to the centre of town being only 15 minutes by bicycle from the train station using the A4280.
On campus there is parking for bicycles outside the Campus Centre.
See www.sustrans.org.uk for more details on cycle routes and maps.
At our Bedford campus we offer plenty of on-site parking.
