History of University College London tribute. Bentham's body is on public display at UCL in a wooden cabinet, at the end of the South Cloisters of the UCL Main Building; he had directed in his will that he wanted his body to be preserved as a lasting memorial to the university. This 'Auto-Icon' has become famous. Unfortunately, when it came to his head, the preservation process went disastrously wrong and left it badly disfigured. A wax head was made to replace it; the actual head is now kept in the college vaults. In 1827, a year after the founding of UCL, construction of the Main
History of University College London institutional ancestry preceding their formation as "universities": for example what is now the University of Nottingham can trace some elements back to 1798 but only began university-level teaching with the foundation of the first civic college in 1881 (royal charter as University College Nottingham in 1903), and did not gain University status (via a new royal charter) until 1948. Conversely, King's College London (KCL) was founded after UCL, but received its Royal Charter (granting it legal existence as a corporation) in 1829, before UCL, so arguably is older, leading King's College students to claim the title of third oldest university