The Wills Memorial Building was commissioned in 1912 by George Alfred Wills and Henry Herbert Wills, the magnates of the Bristol tobacco company W. D. & H. O. Wills, in honour of their father, Henry Overton Wills III, benefactor and first Chancellor of the university who donated £100,000 to the university. Sir George Oatley, who also worked on a number of other buildings for the University, was chosen as architect and told to "build to last". He produced a design in the Perpendicular Gothic style, to evoke the famous university buildings of Oxford and Cambridge. The building was funded through the fortunes which the Wills family made through tobacco. Oatley later claimed that his inspiration for the building came from a dream where he saw a tower on a hill, with shields around it.