Arms of Newnham College Arms:Argent, on a chevron azure between in chief two crosses botonny fitchy and in base a mullet sable, a griffin's head erased or between two mascles of the field
Scarf colours: grey, with a central broad band of navy, itself divided in two by a narrow gold stripe
The college was founded in 1871 by a group organising Lectures for Ladies, members of which included philosopher Henry Sidgwick and suffragist campaigner Millicent Garrett Fawcett. It was the second women's college to be founded at Cambridge, following Girton College. The College celebrated its 150th anniversary[5] throughout 2021 and 2022.
History
The history of Newnham begins with the formation of the Association for Promoting the Higher Education of Women in Cambridge in 1869. The progress of women at Cambridge University owes much to the pioneering work undertaken by the philosopher Henry Sidgwick, fellow of Trinity. Lectures for Ladies had been started in Cambridge in 1869,[6] and such was the demand from those who could not travel in and out on a daily basis that in 1871 Sidgwick, one of the organisers of the lectures, rented a house at 74, Regent Street to house five female students who wished to attend lectures but did not live near enough to the University to do so. He persuaded Anne Clough, who had previously run a school in the Lake District, to take charge of this house. The following year (1872), Clough moved to Merton House (built c. 1800) on Queen's Road,[7] then to premises in Bateman Street. Clough eventually became president of the college.
Demand continued to increase and the supporters of the enterprise formed a limited company to raise funds, lease land and build on it. in 1875 the first building for Newnham College was built on the site off Sidgwick Avenue where the college remains.[8] In 1876 Henry Sidgwick married Eleanor Mildred Balfour who was already a supporter of women's education. They lived at Newnham for two periods during the 1880s and 1890s.[6]
The college formally came into existence in 1880 with the amalgamation of the Association and the Company. Women were allowed to sit University examinations as of right from 1881; their results were recorded in separate class-lists. Its name has occasionally been spelt phonetically as Newham College.[9]
The demand from prospective students remained buoyant and the Newnham Hall Company built steadily, providing three more halls, a laboratory and a library, in the years up to the First World War. The architect Basil Champneys was employed throughout this period and designed the buildings in the Queen Anne style to much acclaim, giving the main college buildings an extraordinary unity. These and later buildings are grouped around beautiful gardens, which many visitors to Cambridge never discover, and, unlike most Cambridge colleges, students may walk on the grass for most of the year.
Many young women in mid-19th-century England had no access to the kind of formal secondary schooling which would have enabled them to go straight into the same university courses as the young men – the first principal herself had never been a pupil in a school. So Newnham's founders allowed the young women to work at and to a level which suited their attainments and abilities. Some of them, with an extra year's preparation, did indeed go on to degree-level work. And as girls' secondary schools were founded in the last quarter of the 19th century, staffed often by those who had been to the women's colleges of Cambridge, Oxford and London, the situation began to change. In 1890 the Newnham student Philippa Fawcett was ranked above the Senior Wrangler, i.e. top in the Mathematical Tripos. By the First World War the vast majority of Newnham students were going straight into degree-level courses.
A new Pfeiffer Building was built in 1893, largely funded by £5,000 from a bequest by the poet Emily Jane Pfeiffer to support the education of women.[10] In tailoring the curriculum to the students, Newnham found itself at odds with the other Cambridge college for women, Girton, founded two years earlier. Emily Davies, Girton's founder, believed passionately that equality could only be expressed by women doing the same courses as the men, on the same time-table. This meant that Girton attracted a much smaller intake in its early years. But the Newnham Council held its ground, reinforced by the commitment of many of its members to educational reform generally and a wish to change some of the courses Cambridge was offering to its men.
In 1948 Newnham, like Girton, attained the full status of a college of the university.
Women in the university
Sidgwick Hall and the Sunken Garden.
The university as an institution at first took no notice of these women and arrangements to sit examinations had to be negotiated with each examiner individually. In 1868 Cambridge's Local Examinations Board (governing non-university examinations) allowed women to take exams for the first time. Concrete change within the university would have to wait until the first female colleges were formed, and following the foundation of Girton College (1869) and Newnham (1871) women were allowed into lectures, albeit at the discretion of the lecturer. By 1881, however, a general permission to sit examinations was negotiated.
A first attempt to secure for the women the titles and privileges of their degrees, not just a certificate from their colleges, was rebuffed in 1887 and a second try in 1897 went down to even more spectacular defeat. Undergraduates demonstrating against the women and their supporters did hundreds of pounds' worth of damage in the Market Square.
The First World War brought a catastrophic collapse of fee income for the men's colleges and Cambridge and Oxford both sought state financial help for the first time. This was the context in which the women tried once more to secure inclusion, this time asking not only for the titles of degrees but also for the privileges and involvement in university government that possession of degrees proper would bring. In Oxford this was secured in 1920 but in Cambridge the women went down to defeat again in 1921, having to settle for the titles – the much-joked-about BA tit – but not the substance of degrees. This time the male undergraduates celebrating victory over the women used a handcart as a battering ram to destroy the lower half of the bronze gates at Newnham, a memorial to Anne Clough.
The women spent the inter-war years trapped on the threshold of the university. They could hold university posts but they could not speak or vote in the affairs of their own departments or of the university as a whole. Finally, in 1948 the women were admitted to full membership of the university, although the university still retained powers to limit their numbers. National university expansion after the Second World War brought further change. In 1954, a third women's college, New Hall, (now Murray Edwards College), was founded. In 1965 the first mixed graduate college, Darwin College, was founded. The 1970s saw three men's colleges (Churchill, Clare and King's) admit women for the first time. Gradually Cambridge was ceasing to be "a men's university although of a mixed type", as it had been described in the 1920s in a memorably confused phrase. Cambridge now has no all-male colleges and Girton is also mixed. Newnham and Murray Edwards retain all-female student bodies, whilst Lucy Cavendish College started admitting men in 2021.
With the conversion of the last men-only colleges into mixed colleges in the 1970s and '80s, there were inevitably questions about whether any of the remaining women-only colleges would also change to mixed colleges. The issue again became prominent as women-only colleges throughout the rest of the country began admitting men, and following the 2007 announcement that Oxford University's last remaining women-only college, St Hilda's, would admit men, Cambridge is the only university in the United Kingdom where colleges have admissions policies that discriminate on the basis of gender.[11][12]
These arms, granted in 1923, were designed by the Revd Edward Earle Dorling to incorporate charges from the arms of those intimately connected with the founding of the college.
In the early years of the college Anne Clough was the Principal. She was a member of the landed gentry family of Clough of Plas Clough, Denbighshire, whose arms are blazoned "Azure, between three mascles a greyhound's head couped argent". The out-students were under the care of Marion Kennedy. Her arms were "Argent, a chevron gules between in chief two crosses botonny fitchy sable and in base a boar's head couped sable langued gules" - slightly differing from the arms of Kennedy of Kirkmichael, which has crosses crosslet fitchy.
The other great benefactors of the college were Henry Sidgwick and Eleanor Mildred Balfour, who married in 1876. Mrs Sidgwick was Vice-Principal of one of the College's Halls, later becoming Principal of the College in 1892. Their arms were - Sidgwick (assumed arms): Gules, a fess between three griffins' heads erased or; and Balfour (of Balbirnie): Argent, on a chevron engrailed between three mullets sable an otter's head erased argent.
In the college arms the chevron links them with the coats of Balfour and Kennedy, while its colour and the mascles refer to Clough. The crosses come from Kennedy, the mullet from Balfour, and the griffin's head from Sidgwick. No crest was granted, for although a corporate body may have a crest, it was thought that a crest and helm would be inappropriate to one composed entirely of women.
Pfeiffer Arch – the main entrance to the college before the Porters' Lodge moved to Sidgwick Avenue
Basil Champneys designed what was popularly said to be "the second-longest continuous indoor corridor in Europe" in order to prevent the women of the college stepping outside in the rain. The laboratory, which can be found near the sports field, now houses a space which hosts a range of cultural events, such as theatre productions, music recitals and art exhibitions.
Alongside a formal hall, there is also a modern buttery in which to eat and relax. The College is also home to the Grade II* listed 1897 Yates Thompson Library and the Horner Markwick building. The library was originally Newnham students' primary reference source since women were not allowed into the University Library. The library was built with a gift from Henry Yates Thompson and his wife, Elizabeth. It remains one of the largest college libraries in Cambridge with a collection of 100,000 volumes, including approximately 6,000 rare books.[13]
The college has two official combination rooms that represent the interests of students in the college and are responsible for social aspects of college life. Undergraduates are members of the Junior Combination Room (JCR), whilst graduate students are members of the Middle Combination Room (MCR).
Newnham has many societies of its own including clubs for rowing, football, netball, tennis, and many other sports, as well as several choirs. As Newnham is a non-denominational foundation, it does not have its own chapel. Choral scholars at Newnham form part of Selwyn College's chapel choir. Newnham College Boat Club, the university's first women's boat club, share a boathouse with Jesus College Boat Club.
This article's list of alumni may not follow Wikipedia's verifiability policy. Please improve this article by removing names that do not have independent reliable sources showing they merit inclusion in this article AND are alumni, or by incorporating the relevant publications into the body of the article through appropriate citations.(July 2019)
Newnham College appeared in the 2019 film Red Joan.
ITV's detective series Grantchester set the first episode of the fifth series (2020) in Newnham, in a plot featuring the death of a student after a May Ball.
Gallery
Sidgwick Hall and the sunken garden of Newnham College.
A view of Sidgwick.
Peile Building.
A view of Pfeiffer Arch and the Old Hall building.
Selwyn College, Cambridge is a constituent college of the University of Cambridge. The college was founded in 1882 by the Selwyn Memorial Committee in memory of George Augustus Selwyn (1809–1878), the first Bishop of New Zealand (1841–1868), and subsequently Bishop of Lichfield (1868–1878). Its main buildings consist of three courts built of stone and brick. There are several secondary buildings, including adjacent townhouses and lodges serving as student hostels on Grange Road, West Road and Sidgwick Avenue. The college has some 60 fellows and 110 non-academic staff.
Benjamin Hall Kennedy was an English scholar and schoolmaster, known for his work in the teaching of the Latin language. He was an active supporter of Newnham College and Girton College as Cambridge University colleges for women.
Girton College is one of the 31 constituent colleges of the University of Cambridge. The college was established in 1869 by Emily Davies and Barbara Bodichon as the first women's college in Cambridge. In 1948, it was granted full college status by the university, marking the official admittance of women to the university. In 1976, it was the first Cambridge women's college to become coeducational.
Murray Edwards College is a women-only constituent college of the University of Cambridge. It was founded in 1954 as New Hall and renamed in 2008. The name honours a gift of £30 million by alumna Ros Edwards and her husband Steve, and the first President and woman Vice-Chancellor of the University of Cambridge, Rosemary Murray.
Anne Jemima Clough was an early English suffragist and a promoter of higher education for women. She was the first principal of Newnham College.
Mary Marshall was an economist who in 1874 had been one of the first women to take the Tripos examination at Cambridge University – although, as a woman, she had been excluded from receiving a degree. She was one of a group of five women who were the first to be admitted to study at Newnham College, the second women's college to be founded at the University.
Sarah Emily Davies was an English feminist who founded Girton College, Cambridge. She campaigned as a suffragist and for women's rights to university education. In her early life, she attended meetings of the National Association for the Promotion of Social Science and befriended Barbara Bodichon and Elizabeth Garrett Anderson. After moving to London with her mother in 1862, she wrote for and edited the English Woman's Journal and joined the Langham Place Group. She co-founded the London Schoolmistresses' Association and the Kensington Society, which pressured for universal suffrage, although she herself believed only unmarried women and widows should gain the vote.
Emily Elizabeth Constance Jones known as Constance Jones or E.E. Constance Jones, was an English philosopher and educator. She worked in logic and ethics and served as mistress of Girton College, Cambridge from 1903 to 1916.
The Bishop of Hereford is the ordinary of the Church of England Diocese of Hereford in the Province of Canterbury.
Eleanor Mildred Sidgwick was a physics researcher assisting Lord Rayleigh, an activist for the higher education of women, Principal of Newnham College of the University of Cambridge, and a leading figure in the Society for Psychical Research.
Sidgwick Avenue is a road located in western Cambridge, England. The avenue runs east-west and links Grange Road to the west with Queen's Road to the east. The line of the road continues northeast into central Cambridge as Silver Street. Sidgwick Avenue is flanked by Newnham College, Ridley Hall, Selwyn College and the Sidgwick Site of the University of Cambridge.
Queen's Road is a major road to the west of central Cambridge, England. It links with Madingley Road and Northampton Street to the north and with Sidgwick Avenue, Newnham Road and Silver Street to the south.
Regent Street is an arterial street in southeast central Cambridge, England. It runs between St Andrew's Street, at the junction with Park Terrace, to the northwest and Hills Road at the junction with the A603 to the southeast. Regent Terrace runs in parallel immediately to the northeast. Beyond that is Parker's Piece, a large grassed area with footpaths.
The Cambridge University Moral Sciences Club, founded in October 1878, is a philosophy discussion group that meets weekly at the University of Cambridge during term time. Speakers are invited to present a paper with a strict upper time limit of 45 minutes, after which there is discussion for an hour. Several Colleges have hosted the Club: Trinity College, King's College, Clare College, Darwin College, St John's College, and from 2014 Newnham College.
Marion Bidder was an English physiologist and one of the first women to do independent research in Cambridge. For nearly a decade, she was in charge of the Balfour Laboratory in Cambridge and in 1895 she was the first woman to speak about a paper she had written at a Royal Society meeting.
Edith Sharpley (1859–1940) was a Classical Lecturer at Newnham College, Cambridge from 1884 to 1910.
Agnes Amy Bulley was an English promoter of women's education. She was an early student at both Girton College, Cambridge and Newnham College and one of the first two female students to sit the tripos examinations in Cambridge. She entered education where she helped to create a "women's department" at what would be Manchester University. She wrote about women's rights and the growth of "white blouse" employment.
Helen Gladstone was a British educationist, vice-principal at Newnham College in Cambridge, and co-founder of the Women's University Settlement.
Marion Grace Kennedy was a British classical scholar. She was a supporter of women's suffrage and higher education for women. She was born too early to take advantage of women's higher education and her father took the credit for some of her work. She helped to found and then worked for Newnham College, Cambridge, where her ideas shaped its constitution.
Blanche Athena Clough (1861–1960) was a British classicist and educational administrator who was the Principal of Newnham College, Cambridge (1920–1923).
↑ Gardner, Alice (1921). A Short History of Newnham College, Cambridge. Cambridge, UK: Bowes & Bowes. p.55. In fact, the crowning triumph of the Graces marks the success of the policy of Miss Clough, Dr. and Mrs. Sidgwick, Miss Kennedy, and the other founders of the College ...
1 2 Stefan Collini, "Sidgwick, Henry (1838–1900)", Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, 2004; online edn, May 2007. Retrieved 4 January 2017
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