Buildings & Gardens

Phyllis Hetzel guides a tour of Newnham's buildings

A Potted History of the College

First I must first explain how the College started. It was not as the result of a high minded vision, but in response to demand for accommodation for women who wanted to attend the lectures for women started in Cambridge in 1870. These were provided by some Senior Members of the University "as a free will offering of Higher Culture made to women by members of the University to enable them to fit themselves to pass with credit the Examination for women over 18 which had been granted by the University in the year 1868 on the receipt of a memorial praying for such an exam". The Memorial had resulted from the work of The Association for Promoting the Higher Education for Women in Cambridge. As Henry Sidgwick pointed out this high-minded committee did not want the bother about providing accommodation. It was sensible Yorkshireman Henry who set up the Newnham Hall Company Ltd. Its practical aim was a building of what was described as an Approved Boarding House.

Basil Champneys' Design

As we said in the beginning the whole college that you see today was never planned as a whole, but was developed piecemeal round an E-Shape. Basil was its architect from 1873 until 1913. Let us now take a look at the buildings he so skilfully knit together. We were recently asked why these buildings are so different from others which he did. Well, those others as this one also had to take account of what the client wanted. Especially for ecclesiastical buildings there was a tendency towards the stern and unyielding Gothic advocated by Pugin. At Newnham he must have felt a new freedom - Henry Sidgwick had insisted Newnham should not be associated with any form of institutional religion. Despite his church background it seems to us from much of what he wrote and said that he was a middle of the road C of E man. At Newnham he was able to adopt the disputed Queen Anne Style.

Much has been written about the "Conflict of styles". For our purposes I will adopt what Mark Girouard has written in his delightful book "Sweetness and Light". "Queen Anne Style has comparatively little to do with Queen Anne... .it came with red brick and white painted sash windows, with curly pedimented gables and delicate brick panels of sunflowers, swags or cherubs, with small window panes, steep roofs and curving bay windows, with wooden balconies and little fancy oriels..." if we look carefully we shall see samples of all of these in Newnham..

As you approach the College by way of Newnham Walk you will pass on your right Ridley Hall followed by the Rosalind Franklin Building (NC) and then Strachey Building (NC) On your left, after the Doctors Surgery you will pass The Pightle, a Victorian Villa built by Professor Liveing in 1864 (NC) and then the Principal's Lodge built in 1958. I will present these at the end. I will only ask you to remember that the road ended at the Pightle, although a lane continued Newnham Walk through to Grange Road until 1892.

The Champneys Buildings

As we stand admiring the gates, or wondering how we enter we may notice the charming little building immediately to our left with its delightful cupola.

This is the Gymnasium (now called "The Coach House") and is a Champneys. It was built in 1878, three years after the first hall of residence The promoters were very keen on healthy exercise and good plain food. This led to the provision of racquets and tennis courts, as well as the keeping of pigs and hens, and the planting of orchards. The gardens were left to take care of themselves!

Tennis players 1874	Tennis players 1933

  Go in now through the Pfeiffer Arch: You will be surprised to know that it was only built in 1893, 18 years after Old Hall. This is because it was not until 1892, and some years of hard negotiation that the Sidgwicks had persuaded the local authorities to close the lane which ran on from the end of Newnham Walk at the Pightle down to Grange Road. Instead Sidgwick Avenue was built. This was a crucial development for the College.

Pfeiffer Arch

Having entered you turn to your left and are now facing the not very elegant West wing of Old Hall added in 1877. Go past the Irish Yews and round Old Hall to what seems to be the back but was the front of Old Hall. This is the house capable of being advertised as two residences suitable for the residence of a gentleman (as required by St Johns College). Clare road was the only means of access to the first site of 2 acres, which was on lease from St John’s College. And as the Hall was built on leased land, the design had to be agreeable to the freeholder, St John’s College. Quite a job for the architect. We assume that Champneys was chosen because Henry was a Fellow of Trinity College and they must have met there.

It is interesting that the Newnham Hall Co shareholders signed their Articles of Association on Feb 25 1874 and resolved themselves into a building committee on the same day. "After an interview with the architect they proceeded to consider the plans... " "On May 27 1875 (just 15 months) later it was recognised as an Approved Boarding House for students applying for accommodation in Cambridge."

Some hustlers the Victorians!

Old Hall was a success. After extending it as we have seen it was followed by Sidgwick Hall in 1880.

Sidgwick Hall

In June 1880 the Newnham Hall Company and the Association "were dissolved and a new Association formed by amalgamating them which has been incorporated under the name Newnham College as an association not for profit. This remained its form until a full Charter was granted in 1917." With even more confidence, the fledgling went ahead with the splendid Clough Hall and its fine Dining Hall.

Clough Hall

In between Clough Dining Hall and Sidgwick Hall there can just be discerned the top of the original Yates Thompson Library built in 1897 and extended in 1907. Across from Clough through the view point of a Jekyll like herbaceous border is the Old Laboratory built at the same time as the Gym in 1878. It was decommissioned in 1923 and converted very recently into a performing arts centre.

Old Labs

Having passed Clough we come to Kennedy Building built in 1906 to accommodate Newnham’s growing faculty members. Last of all the Champneys buildings is Peile, completed in 1910.

Kennedy	Peile

Joining the whole complex and some later buildings together are the corridors which instil terror into the hearts of visitors. Champneys did not think that women in their long dresses should be expected to cross over wet and muddy quadrangles. !!

And now I should like to read you Mark Girouard’s charming summing up of the Champneys campus: "Each block has a different character. Old Hall is pretty but a little prim, Sidgwick confident and relaxed. Clough almost overpoweringly dainty. Pfeiffer sumptuous and concentrated; Kennedy and Peile are drier than the earlier buildings but still very handsome." [Sweetness and Light: the Queen Anne Movement.]

Later Additions

Now on our return we go to a more diverse pattern. Champneys’ association with Newnham virtually came to an end with WW I. Obviously he retained affection for the College since he left it a benefaction of £1000 when he died in 1935 at the age of 93.

It was not until 1938 that the College began building again. From then until 2003 - some 60 years -the College will have completed another 8 buildings, using 5 different architects. Let us notice those other buildings on our return journey from Peile Hail.

Before we pass Sidgwick it is worth leaving the main path to examine the reconstruction of the library - the Horner Extension (1962, a notoriously poor building period) had to be demolished for structural reasons. The new building magnificently compensates for this loss (John Miller and Partners, 2004). It consciously does full honours by its echos of its distinguished original.

Horner-Markwick Library

As does also the charming Katharine Stephen Room for rare books (Haward and Heyingen, 1987). Returning now to the main path we come to Fawcett, designed by Elizabeth Scott in 1938. She was the granddaughter of Sir George Gilbert Scott. In the the gable you can see reflections of Champneys, although the basic grey colour is not so warm and welcoming as his carefully banded red brick.

Katharine Stephen room	Fawcett

Facing us there is a somewhat mundane office extension which replaced a charming single room end-piece of the original Pfeiffer block. We do not yet know who the architect of this block was, but it seems this work was done in 1964....

Joined to it, by a glass corridor is a building which completely breaks the previous tradition: the three legged, flat roofed, lead faced Strachey Building designed by Christophe Grillet in 1968. (He also designed the Horner Library and the Buttery). But no echoes can be heard in the Principal’s Lodge which fronts Strachey across the road. The architect was Louis Osmond, and the building dates from 1958. It is uncompromising in its sixties modernity, and its recollection of a Roman Villa. Its heart was originally a courtyard enclosed by glass and open to the sky: glorious to look at but no proof against the rigours of a Cambridge winter. It was altered and the skylight closed 1993.  

Strachey	Principal's lodge

The neighbour of Strachey Building is the Rosalind Franklin, designed by Allies & Morrison and completed in 1995. This seems much closer to the Champneys style although in modern dress: note the colour of the brick , the white painted windows, the pitched roof.

Rosalind Franklin Building

And the very latest, the new library, also shows echoes of the Yates Thompson, with its gables and pitched roofs. You might say that the spirit of Champneys has come through in the end.

The Pightle

As we say good-bye we can look at the Pightle built in 1864 for Professor Liveing. Bought by the College in the forties, imagine what Newnham might have been had it not had Champneys. As Byron said of Milton might it not have been "A trifle heavy, if no less divine"?

(c) Phyllis Hetzel, 2003