How did a little corner of Canada end up in Old Harlow?

Blink, and you might well miss something a little unusual about the quaint, almost village-like, centre of Old Harlow in Essex. Here, amongst a scattering of businesses, a church and a community centre, sits a campus belonging not to a British university but a Canadian one headquartered 2,327 miles (3,745 km) away. How and why did it end up here?

"I really like Harlow," says Alyssa Griffiths, a 25-year-old from Torbay in Newfoundland, Canada.

An education student, she describes the town as "homey" and "a lot like Newfoundland" because the "weather is very similar".

Despite being an ocean away from home, Ms Griffiths is still on the grounds of her university - Memorial University of Newfoundland.

She has merely swapped university campuses - from St John's, in Newfoundland, for Harlow, in England.

The campus, which has 16 staff and up to 60 students at any one time, was the brainchild of Lord Taylor of Harlow who, after helping create the new town of Harlow after World War Two, became president of Memorial on the other side of the Atlantic.

Speaking at the time, Lord Taylor said: "I think it would be rather fitting if the oldest town in the New World is linked to the newest town in the Old World."

The campus has steadily grown since 1969 to include a 150-year-old Maltings building, a Victorian former schoolhouse, a former butcher's shop and an upstairs apartment in Market Street and the oak-beamed Cabot House.

Memorial is not the only Canadian institution with a UK campus. Since1993, Queen's University in Ontario has run its Bader College campus from Herstmonceux Castle in East Sussex.

Students from Memorial come to Harlow to continue their studies in a range of fields including teaching, business, biochemistry, biology, the visual arts, theatre and the social sciences

"I personally didn't know about it until I heard about it from one of the girls who ended up coming over with me," says Ms Griffiths.

"Everyone I spoke to who had done this programme said it was amazing and life-changing and I would completely agree with them.

"I'll be trying to spread the word when I go home."

For students like Ms Griffiths, spending the Canadian Thanksgiving - held on the second Monday of October - away from home and family can be tough.

However, a local head teacher - herself a former student at Memorial - invited the current students over for a traditional Jiggs Dinner (which is like a roast dinner, but boiled).

Jayme Humber, 23, from Corner Brook in Newfoundland, is currently teaching reception-aged children at a primary school in Harlow.

"It is really good," she says. "It is really nice to see the English school system and compare it to Canada and Harlow is a great place to travel from."

In the first three months of her semester in Essex, she has used her Harlow base to travel widely.

"We've been to a lot of countries on the weekends such as , Holland, Ireland, Greece and we're about go to Spain."

Years from now, both Ms Humber and Ms Griffiths are likely to be ed by their pupils as that "Canadian teacher" they had when they were young.

Harlow resident Michelle Sortwell was born in the year Memorial's Harlow campus first opened and had a "Canadian teacher" at primary school.

But while Ms Sortwell re the teacher being "really good" she no longer re her name.

It was only after Ms Sortwell became the campus's finance manager that she realised her Canadian teacher must have been a student at the institution which now pays her salary.

"I am desperately trying to find her," she says. "It would be really nice to track her down and tell her where I am working now."

She loves working at Memorial but says some things took a while to get used to.

"They say 'right' a lot at the end of their sentences and that threw me a little bit because I didn't know if I was meant to respond to the 'right' or is it just an end of a sentence":[]}