Canterbury accom wiki - everything you want to know

Did a compendium of info, and pasted it into Wiki. Also see below. Please correct Wiki if new info... (dont just add it here). Thanks.

Information at http://kenthospitality.kent.ac.uk or http://www.kent.ac.uk/hospitality/staff-student/accommodation/guide.html
UKC Hospitality is a private company

Accommodation is campus- and college-based. Each of the four colleges has teaching rooms, living quarters, food areas and a bar. If you are in a certain college it doesn’t mean that you necessarily have your teaching based there or that you can only use your college facilities.
College rooms are located in three of the colleges on campus - Eliot, Keynes and Rutherford. Colleges are a centre of social and educational activity and each has its own character.

The catered residences are located in Eliot College, Keynes College and Rutherford College. Only breakfast included in catered – other meals optional. Students get an allowance (currently £1.50 or more) for dinner if no breakfast taken in the morning (closes 0930) your student card which you can use to buy breakfast. However if you do not use your allowance it will not be rolled over to the next day.

There are no 'proper' kitchen facilities in halls apart from a sink, microwave, kettle and tiny fridge. No more than 6-8 bedrooms share these facilities, which offer the most cost-effective accommodation.

Internet charges are included in room prices. All rooms are connected. Wi-fi on college is free, but often does not reach the rooms.

The self-catered accommodation is located at Darwin College, Darwin houses; Parkwood (a student village on the edge of campus), Tyler court (A, B, C). Self catered accommodation has full kitchen facilities – generally 2 large fridge/freezers, sink, cooker + grill, kettle and adequate storage space.

Regular cleaning is provided. If you are in halls, your corridor and bathroom facilities will be cleaned every day by a cleaner and your room will be hovered once every 7 to 10 days. If you are in Parkwood or Darwin Houses the system is different and a cleaner only comes in every 7 to 10 days to clean your kitchen and vacuum your rooms. All your en-suites are your responsibility to clean.

Students can move into accommodation from mid-September. Fresher’s week starts on the third week, and term officially starts the following Monday – the fourth week of September. If on a particular computer course and if it is necessary to move in early you'll have to notify the university who will try and allocate you in another room for the duration - although you will be charged for this.

If you wish to have a TV in your room you have to have a TV license by law, even if your in a Parkwood house or Darwin Houses. By law if you have a secure lock on your door it qualifies as a separate tenancy and therefore you need your own TV license. IP-TV is available through internet.

It is more social in the big colleges as you get to see a lot more people. In contrast Tyler Court is quite strict on things like locking corridors. Plus from Elliot, Rutherford and Keynes, you can just walk around everywhere very easily. Students here may tend to go out clubbing and to bars more.

Sharing really isn't that bad. Everyone (just about) is clean and considerate. So there's hardly any fighting over showers. Plus, it’s a grand cheaper!

If you're living in any of the colleges, you have to clear out for Christmas and Easter. Overseas students therefore frequently prefer self-catering.

If you are thinking to get your deposit back for the accommodation think twice. In a worst case scenario, you may be forced to clean the whole house (if in Parkwood) by yourself the last couple of days, just to ensure you get your deposit back. You are responsible for cleaning the common area so if you are the last one left you have to clean otherwise everyone looses their deposit. Think what will happens if you live with pigs.

Noise can be an issue… it is similar everywhere and it is to be expected at times. However if you end up any where on central campus, you can enjoy a ballad of drunken singing, yelling, swearing boys and shrieking girls. Rules are in place to prevent loud noise. If there is any trouble, Campus Watch are only a phone call away. The guards have the authority to tell those making the noise to keep quiet. If they refuse, they can face heavy fines.

If unhappy with your accommodation there will be an opportunity to change if people are willing by early October. In order to do this you will need to go to the hospitality office once you have settled in and ask them to consider you for a swap if any others are willing.

You can eat at any of the colleges, even if on a meal deal. It's worth dragging yourself out of bed for. The food quality varies. The meals work out really cheap with the KentOne card.

Eliot College
Eliot College is the longest established college, named after the famous poet. From the dining hall windows there is a magnificent view of the Cathedral, which is spectacular at night.
Eliot College is centrally located and catered. Over 200 basic and mostly small college rooms of approx 12 square metres (7 rooms per corridor). Each room has a basin.
Each corridor has a shared bathroom, shower and incredibly small cupboard which is amusingly described as a kitchen (it has a power point and two gas rings). There is a very tiny kitchen (cupboard like) where you are allowed to boil water on the 2-ring stove. There's also a kettle. Don’t try to cook meals on this stove! And don't fry as it sets the fire alarm off. There isn't a fridge; so many people try to hang plastic bags out of the window. It’s ok for making pasta, but difficult for anything involving more than 1 step.

Some rooms have an excellent view looking down the hill onto the city and the cathedral. The windows are massive - and one piece of advice is never to mess about near it when open.

It's nice and warm in the rooms. Furnishings are reasonable; although I'm sure the curtains and blanket are the original ones from when the university first opened. You get clean sheets once a week...if you can be bothered to change your bedclothes that often.

Washing facilities, if you can't take it home to mummy is in the basement. If you can find it! Eliot College is a maze. The machines are old and complicated. It's easier and less scary to take your washing to Rutherford where you only have to decide if it is white or coloureds.

There is a small shop in the entrance and it sells the essentials. There are also photocopying facilities in the Porters Lodge. A short walk across the walkways is a new set of shops. Beware though it is very expensive!

The major advantage is that Elliot at the centre of the campus. Excellent for rolling out of bed in the morning to a lecture. Sometimes it's in Eliot and that's just downstairs. The library is a 2 minutes walk, as is the Computer Centre etc. There's a computer centre and library in Eliot too.

Drawbacks are that the walls are very thin and the cleaner comes in and cleans your sink etc even if you are still in bed. You can also guarantee that the fire alarm goes off every week at about 4am!

It's also really easy to make friends as you are in corridors and there are about 500 people in Eliot to choose from.

Becket Court
Becket Court is affiliated with Eliot. It has 103 modern en suite small bedrooms, comfortably furnished to a good standard. Near Eliot College.
Becket Court boasts large en-suite rooms with oodles of storage space. The only lack is that you have to go over to Eliot (a short walk, but in the winter OH how the wind blows across campus, remember to pack lots of warm clothes) to go the bar or get to the vending machines.

Rutherford college.
Rutherford College was named after the scientist who developed the nuclear theory of the atom. It was felt that he was a particularly appropriate namesake given the University's original desire to break down the boundaries between disciplines.
The basic design of the college is to a large extent a mirror of Eliot College, and was inspired by Louis Kahn's design for a residential block at Bryn Mawr College in Pennsylvania. The need to have three hundred study-bedrooms and several large areas for distinctive use, such as teaching, a common room and a dining hall plus kitchens, led to the adoption of a section design with the college divided into several square blocks, each containing a distinctive interior space with study bedrooms along all four walls.

The Standard rooms are tiny. The walls are paper thin. So you hear somebody coughing four rooms away at night. You may fell out of your bed at night because it is so narrow. If you do not like canteen food, you may live mainly on pot noodles and bread. So you may not have the nerve to study

The kitchens are non-existent: you are given a microwave, fridge and kettle. But it is liveable, and although the canteen food isn’t amazing its nice going to dinner with a large group of mates every night. There's no living room, but again you work round it- You end up all hanging out in one of the rooms on your corridor.

Rutherford College is centrally located and catered. Over 300 basic single rooms (up to12 sq m) in main college building, each with own sink. Over 50 are large (12-15 sq m), 10 are extra large (over 15 sq m). Typically arranged in corridors of 7. Rooms have recently been refurbished. Some single en suite rooms that have been specially adapted for disabled users.
Each floor has one toilet and two showers, plenty for the 7 living on the corridor. your find that people get up at different times, so there’s never a wait for either.

"The Bar" is advertised as RuTHErford BAR. It is commonly considered as a Trendy Wine Bar amongst students, due to its al fresco menu and highest drinks prices on campus. It has no real ale and stout on tap.
Rutherford’s bar resembles a school common room but its great for a quiet drink and chat with your mates. You can sit in the Rutherford bar even when it is closed. So it is like a social meeting place and not just a bar. Very popular on footie nights as has large pull-down screen. Don’t let the bar put you off Rutherford, it takes less than a minute to walk over to Eliot.

Keynes College

Keynes College is named after the leading 20th century economist - John Maynard Keynes. Keynes College is the third oldest college of the University of Kent. It was established in 1968.
Keynes is notable for having a much clearer separation between the residential and non-residential areas than the other three colleges, with the teaching rooms and old dining hall concentrated at the front and east of the college.
Keynes College (near Rutherford College) offers over 160 en-suite bedrooms. Fairly central. Catered.

Has a good common room which is cool for watching TV. -Security of belongings has been an issue here.

Darwin College

Darwin had strong connections to the historic county of Kent, having lived in Down House at Downe.

Typical student housing based around a scene from a garden.

Darwin is self catered with newly fitted kitchens from 2007, and like all other accommodation, internet connections in every room. Fairly central, if located at the edge of campus (opposite end to The Venue (nightclub)... a bit further than Rutherford and fairly near to Tyler Court.

Parkwood

Parkwood is self-catered. A 10-minute walk on the edge of campus, near playing fields. Residents often find a good community atmosphere here.

Parkwood is not a "college" of it's own. So everyone who lives in Parkwood gets assigned to a college which is either Darwin, Eliot, Rutherford or more likely Keynes.

All regular and superior Parkwood rooms are shared between 4 and 6 and within the building there are 2 bathrooms. In Purchas and Lypeatt Courts only, the rooms also have their own sinks.

Kemsdale / Stock / Nickle / Bossenden Court is the newest accommodation. At least 3 years newer than Tyler Court.

The Farthings houses are all different numbers so you're all in different houses. They are usually mixed but can be either. Since Kent has more female than male students, it is more likely you'll have an all-girl house rather than an all male. Usually the sex preferences is cited on accommodation forms. Accommodation may be labelled single or mixed sex. However it makes little or no difference because people don’t pay attention. You can be in an all girl's house by choice - and yet they all can have some random blokes living with them. Also these are meant to be non smoking – not always respected!

The accommodation in Ellenden was built in the middle 1990s. It was refurbished a couple of years a go. so the accommodation but its all rather white and clean. There is a shower room upstairs and downstairs with the upstairs shower room containing a toilet and a separate toilet room downstairs. There is also a cloakroom and a kitchen/dinning area. It’s in the middle of the Parkwood area. Ellenden Court is “superior”

The community environment that you get in Parkwood is very good. The brand new facilities are second to none (e.g. the exclusive flat screen TV room only available to en-suite Parkwood applicants).

A lot of people do ride bikes from Parkwood (quite a fight over bike parking). There is no special need for bikes if in the other on campus accommodation.

Parkwood En-suites
Upsides:
-The newest accommodation.
-There are less people, about 4-5 share a kitchen/flat.
-These are in the Parkwood student village, so it's quiet but sociable.
-Cheaper than Tyler.

Downsides:
-Friends are often too lazy to walk 'all the way to Parkwood' so make sure you either make friends in Parkwood or you'll be getting fit walking back every night.
-The walk through the woods to get to Parkwood is scary at about 3am, but you can walk along the main road instead. You can also get security to walk you back (they're friendly little – sometimes big - guys who have to walk in the cold/rain/snow just to get students home!).

Tyler Court
Tyler Court (near and associated with Rutherford College) offers 340 en-suite bedrooms. Self-catered. The dearest accommodation. Fairly central (near Eliot College).
Everything is painted a psychologically-damaging shade of industrial magnolia. More importantly, there's no real communal area to speak of in the buildings. If you don't get on with the people you share a kitchen with, then you're looking at a situation where you live with 200 people, none of whom you know.

Tyler Court B&C
Upsides:
-Share a huge kitchen with about 7-8 other people, 2 fridges, 2 cookers
-The bedrooms are huge and you get a very decent sized en-suite.
-Looks like a hotel; each floor has 8-9 bedrooms.
-Good location for the whole campus

Downsides:
-It's very expensive -over £4500 for the year!

Tyler Court A
Upsides:
-It's a lot cheaper than B&C.
-It's still en-suite, but the rooms are smaller.
-It's sociable because there are so many people around, and anyone can use any one’s kitchen so friends can join you.
-Good location for pretty much everywhere.

Downsides:
- Seen as the poor Tyler’s
-The corridors interlink, so there's about 16 people down you're separated part of the corridor, but there's about 3 times that on one floor.
-It gets noisy a lot of the time. The windows in Tyler A, when closed, are about as useful as sticking a piece of paper across the window frame when it comes to blocking out noise.
-The rooms are a lot smaller than B&C, and it's noticeable.
-Security of belongings is an issue here.

Virginia Woolf College
Self-catering flats and studios for postgraduates. New in 2008.

Students with special needs - there are specially adapted study bedrooms for wheelchair users in Rutherford College, all blocks in Tyler Court and in some of the new accommodation at Parkwood.
The only circumstances in which you can bring your car to campus would be on the basis that you had a disability which was supported by a letter from a doctor.

Once accommodation has been assigned, it can be validated on http://www.kent.ac.uk/hospitality/
* look to the left in the blue box called "accommodation" and click on the link called "accept and offer of accommodation".
* from here do not try to log in straight away; look above the login box to see the following instruction: “If you do not have a Accommodation Login account, you can register for one by clicking here”.
* click on the hyper link on the word "here".
* from there fill in the registering information making sure that the user name and password you pick and in a lower case and have no numbers or symbols in them.
* this should then take you to a page which will show you what accommodation you have received.
* if for whatever reason it says there is a problem with conflicting data or an error try a different user name and password and if that still doesn’t work phone 01227 766660 and tell them your having a problem login in and they'll fix it for you.

In the second and third year the majority of students live off campus in plentiful privately rented accommodation. You won’t have any trouble finding a house – but do think carefully about who you’re moving in with and how far away from campus it is. It is bad enough having to go to lectures and the library without having to face a really long walk to get there. Rent isn’t particularly cheap in Canterbury so you might be advised to hunt around first – I got my house through word of mouth so it’s a good idea to chat to 2nd and 3rd years that might be moving. Also try easyroommate.com and Gumtree for house shares.
Stand fast, the letting agents are crooks, it's that simple, so the rents are high, and you have to really push for what needs doing. Be polite, but don't trust them.

The large number of students in Canterbury leads many to believe that there are not enough properties to go round, when in fact there is a surplus of rented accommodation. Although we would advise you against leaving your search for accommodation until the last minute, neither would we advise you to rush out and sign up for the first place you see. Take your time and make sure that you have found a place that is, among other things, affordable, in good condition and in the right location. You also need to be confident that, come September, you will still be on speaking terms with the people you are planning to share with!
For more, see http://kent-editor.oncampus.net/pages/advice/housing/

Dining

UKCH run the food in the colleges (Keynes & Rutherford), as well as the little shops in each college, and the pubs (this includes Darwin's excellent bar).

The Student's Union used to really own Woody’s, and the campus shop, but now they also own the Venue (a nightclub) and the Lighthouse (bar serving cheap but reasonable food). The Venue is a typical student club. Small, but full of booze. Not too much trouble, less than in the clubs in Canterbury (be warned, the term for the Work is “Meat Market&#8221 :wink:

.

College breakfasts are typically from 7:30am till 9:30am on weekdays and 9am till 2pm on weekends. You get 5 items, any more you have to pay for. There’s sausages, fried and scrambled egg, hash browns, beans, bacon, fried bread etc Then there’s healthy stuff like cereal, and fruit and yogurts. You also get a hot drink and a cold drink free.

Rutherford canteen dinners have often fried chicken/chips/potato wedges, veggies and salad etc. And then a changing menu e.g. chicken Kievs! Sometimes you will get a really nice meal! For just a meal it’s about £3.95 in 2008.

Mungos - serves burgers etc. Undergoing change in 2008.

Rutherford bar

Dolce Vita in Keynes is Italian

Gulbenkin cafe also serves food. Under private management. Pricey.

Origins bar has burgers and nachos/chicken fajitas etc
.
Woodies in Parkwood is often called "woody spoons", as it’s quite like Wetherspoons but more expensive.

There is also the light house (3rd floor of the venue) which serves lots of things… try its amazing smoothies!

Good Chinese takeaway place near Westgate called Chop Chop or Super Noodles- yummy! There are large portions and a nice price for students. You can get something like sweet and sour chicken for about £5. What more can you ask for! There’s an al you can eat Chinese in Canterbury

Reply 1

Hev456

I do love that the explanations for Tyler A, B &C as well as the Parkwood ensuites are a post i posted not too long ago.

Did i say it could be used in wiki? No! Seriously, ask first, i know it's a public forum and blah blah, so info could end up anywhere, but it would have been nice to be told. I might have added something better if i'd have known it was being posted on the wiki.

Btw, keynes is not near rutherford, you have elliot before you have rutherford.

Also any information on accommodation rent prices is subject to change every year so bare that in mind when adding them.

Freshers week for us was not on the 3rd week of september, it was on the second, so i guess the only warning i'm gonna give is look at term dates and freshers don't assume you always start in the 3rd week.

Finally, i'm pretty sure that keynes is the newest college (dismissing virginia wolfe of course) so it's the 4th newest, not 3rd.

Reply 2

Truered

But on a serious note the windows in TC A are utter **** at blocking out noise :angry:

Reply 3

Cowberg

Don’t let the bar put you off Rutherford, it takes less than a minute to walk over to Eliot.

Haha. I love that.

But Mungo's is naff. I'm not a fan of THE BAR, but Mungo's is far too dark and dingy to be nice. Although, the only times I've been in there it was rather empty.

Reply 4

Hev456

Cowberg

Haha. I love that.

But Mungo's is naff. I'm not a fan of THE BAR, but Mungo's is far too dark and dingy to be nice. Although, the only times I've been in there it was rather empty.

Origins is the place to be! Or k-bar is good too.

Reply 5

random_bloke

great article, just to correct one mistake.

rooms are not cleaned at all in parkwood houses.

Reply 6

GodspeedGehenna

random_bloke

great article, just to correct one mistake.

rooms are not cleaned at all in parkwood houses.

Thank god.. I read that and it made me slightly worried.

I dont like the idea of a cleaner waking me up at 10am or earlier. :mad:

Reply 7

Smashlite

Someone should add some pictures!
Although the cleaners don't come into your room to clean it, I was woken up today by a cleaner hoovering outside my room.....that was at around 12:00 though....but still.

Reply 8

yogiguy

Hev456

I do love that the explanations for Tyler A, B &C ...
Did i say it could be used in wiki? No! Seriously, ask first, i know it's a public forum and blah blah, so info could end up anywhere, but it would have been nice to be told.

I am very sorry Hev456... Yes your contribution was very good. Just I copy pasted from so many contributions... ! It took me a good part of my weekend, and it really is in Kent students' interest... not ours. My apologies.