History of Hughes Hall

A coffee table history of Hughes Hall combining text by Ged Martin and a large number of photographs is now available.

Hughes Hall is the oldest Graduate College in Cambridge. It was unique in specialising in the admission of women graduates at a time when the University itself still did not confer degrees on women.

The foundation followed the pattern of the other women’s colleges in Cambridge in starting with a Principal and fourteen students in a small rented house. As a key part of the movement for women’s education in the 1870s, the Cambridge Training College came into being, finally, in 1885. This institution, despite many vicissitudes, can truly be said to have been the origin of the College we know today.

‘Mixed College’

The first Principal, Miss Hughes (pictured), always an innovator, championed the cause of co-education. Speaking before the Royal Commission on Secondary Education in 1894, she said, ‘We shall never get first-rate training until men and women are trained together.’ The ideal institution was one with a ‘mixed staff and mixed classes.’ There is at present a healthy mix of gender at all levels of the College of which Miss Hughes would have approved.

 

The First Building

The first building commissioned for the College was designed by architect W. M. Fawcett from Cambridge. The official inauguration of the building took place on 19 October 1895.This building is at the centre of College life even today. Students took up residence there after its completion in the autumn of 1895. They continue to live in the building, though it is widely accepted that rumours about some students who have not left since 1895, are baseless. By 1899, students living-in numbered sixty in the new buildings, and over five hundred had already been trained by the College.

A major contribution to the Building Fund was the sum of £3,000 from the Trustees of Jurgen Edward Pfeiffer and his wife Emily, who at that time made bequests to a number of institutions dedicated to the education of women, including Newnham and Girton Colleges. In recognition of this gift, the ground floor wing, then containing the Library, Dining Hall and Lecture Room, was named the Pfeiffer Wing. In 1935 the College acquired the freehold of the whole Wollaston Road site, a suitable act in its Jubilee Year. Two years later a wing was added to the original Pfeiffer building, completing its symmetry. The new wing was designed by Verner Rees.

Why Hughes?

The College is named after the first Principal, Elizabeth Phillips Hughes. She was an inspiring and charismatic personality, and the first of a succession of remarkably gifted women and men who have led the College to its present position. She was international in her vision, inaugurating contacts with Japan by visiting there as early as in 1902, and collecting around her a team of international students.

The present administration and fellowship continues the tradition of sensible nurturing and warmth that Miss Hughes left behind her when she retired in 1899. She was pastoral in her attitude towards the students and used to frequently refer to them as ‘my students’. At the same time she believed in the freedom of worship and did not insist upon her students undergoing special training in scriptural instruction. This living tradition does much to impart to the College a culture that is open and caring.

Why Hall?

Numbers grew rapidly, and in 1888 houses in Queen Anne’s Terrace and Warkworth Street were rented to house further students. The College had by then a library, a gymnasium and a lecture hall in addition to its residential accommodation. Since the College provided residential accommodation to a very large number of its students it was called a Hall, after a hall of residence. Though this was only a small part of the College’s function, it is indicative of its concern for the social and material well being of its students.

Cambridge Training College to Hughes Hall

Not until 1948 did the University give degrees to women. In November 1949 the College became the Elizabeth Phillips Hughes Hall Company, in everyday usage Hughes Hall. In 1985, after a further revision of its constitution, Hughes Hall became an Approved Foundation. The Cambridge Training College Council voted to be replaced by a President and Fellows.The Fellowship set about the task of developing the College with a will. Their first step was to build the Pavilion Room, a large hall which provided a meeting place which until then the College lacked. Together with its associated seminar rooms, the Pavilion Room also provided a very attractive conference suite which the Fellows saw as a useful addition to the College’s facilities and income. The new suite was designed by C.N. Grillet and was opened in 1989.

At the same time the College gardens were redesigned to make them welcoming to College members throughout the year. The College bought houses close by to accommodate more of its students and in 1992 it built an entirely new court, Chancellors Court, designed by the young London partnership of Shillam and Smith. The new court can house up to 40 students. To support the academic work of the College, the ground floor of the 1938 extension was rebuilt as a Learning Resources Centre, with a well equipped computer suite as well as a reading room. The Pfeiffer wing and the Hall and kitchens were also refurbished so as to create a unified social area for the College.

History of Hughes Hall

Professor Ged Martin has recently finished a new history of the college to celebrate its 125th anniversary. 

An earlier history of the college can be found in Margaret Bottrall, Hughes Hall 1885-1985, Cambridge, 1985, pp.1-132, and appendices. The College is particularly lucky to have written accounts dating back to its beginning. M. V. Hughes chronicled the earliest days in her A London Girl of the Eighties, Oxford, 1936. The Old Students’ Gild Leaflet is another valuable source for the college and education in general in this period.