The Bowland Lady personifies the forest and her image comes from a Lancashire map drawn by William Hole for a poem published in 1622. A copy of the poem, ‘Poly Olbion, or a Chorographical Description of… The Renowned Isle of Great Britain’, resides in the University library and the map is displayed in the college bar.

Bowland College lies at the heart of campus and was one of the first colleges to be built on the Bailrigg campus with many students moving in from their old residences in the Waring and Gillow Factory. Many of the college’s facilities were refurbished in 2011, including the Trough of Bowland which currently holds the prominent status of the oldest college bar on campus. In addition to this, the frontage of the physical Bowland College building was converted into the Learning Zone at the cost of £2.5 million and opened by Sir Alan Langland in January 2010. More recently, the University celebrated the refurbishment and reopening of Bowland Tower, which was completed this January to a very high standard and retains the title of tallest building on campus standing at fourteen storeys high and originally designed to disguise the University’s boiler room chimney.  Bowland has also remained central to the interests of students housing the Students’ Union since at least the 1990s in Slaidburn House and then moving to Bowland Main with refurbished offices in time for the start of the 2013 academic year.

With the stirring motto of ‘Bowland Till I Die’, members of Bowland compete in various inter college sporting events such as the Carter Shield and Bowland alumni flock to their home college every summer for the glory of Founders – an annual competition between Bowland and Lonsdale as the first of Lancaster’s colleges. Alumni of Bowland College include Matthew Fort, TV Food Critic and Journalist (English 1968), Mark Price, Managing Director, Waitrose (Classics and Archaelogy, 1982) and Jason Queally MBE, Olympic Gold Medal Cyclist (Biological Sciences, 1992).