Architecture for education

To mark the 150th anniversary of the foundation of Newnham College and the arrival of women scholars in Cambridge, Kathryn Ferry examines the distinctive style of the college buildings

- Kathryn Ferry

Newnham College, Cambridge University The Principal and Fellows of Newnham College

PEGGY GLADSTONE arrived at Newnham College to study Sanskrit in autumn 1921. That women such as her were still not entirely welcome at Cambridge, she recalled, was made apparent only weeks later, when, in October, a mob of male undergraduates tried to break down the college gates using a handcart for a battering ram. Later that term, scared by the flash of a torch outside her ground-floor room, Peggy made a frantic dash to the topmost room of the Pfeiffer Tower, where a fellow student calmed her nerves: ‘When she let me in I exclaimed that we were invaded, that we should all be raped, murdered, etc... She produced the standard Newnham hospitality which was cocoa and biscuits...and said: “If he gets up here I will offer him some cocoa.”’

That cup of cocoa is a nice analogy for Newnham’s buildings, which are warm, friendly and cheerful to behold. Mark Girouard rated them among ‘the most convincing and delightful examples of the “Queen Anne” style in existence’ (COUNTRY LIFE, December 16, 1971). They were also some of the earliest, making the designs for them by Basil Champneys (1842–1935) as groundbreaking as the female students for whom they were created. From the safety of Newnham’s architectural embrace, generations of women broke down educational boundaries, among them Peggy Gladstone, who went on to become the first Cambridge woman to take first-class honours in both parts of the Oriental languages tripos.