University of Cambridge
From The Colleges of Cambridge 1286 - 1973, Written by Bryan Little, ARCO Publishing Company, Inc., New York, ©1973.
FITZWILLIAM at Cambridge, and St Catherine's at Oxford, owe their existence to the reform movement which in the last century spread gradually over both of England's ancient Universities. Their story proves how dominant the collegiate idea had become by the time they set out on their academic and social course.
The Royal Commission on Oxford and Cambridge was appointed in 1850 and reported in 1852. One of its recommendations was that the two Universities should go back to their original practice and admit students who would not belong to any college. This, it was felt, would make for a University education within the means of many who could not, at that time afford to come up as pensioners. The Commissioners (and here one senses the hidden influence of the Prince Consort who had studied at Bonn) were impressed by the non-collegiate system which prevailed in the Universities of Germany.
This recommendation was far better received at Oxford than it was in Cambridge. Even so, things moved slowly in both places, and in 1867 Parliament threw out a Bill which aimed at the creation, in both Universities, of non collegiate societies; its opponents made much of the inferior social position which such bodies would have and stressed their probable lack of the self-respect and esprit de corps which went with the fully developed college system. Yet a few non-collegiate students did gain admission both to Oxford and Cambridge, and in 1868 Oxford allowed the matriculation of men who were nulli collegio vel aulae adscripti. Cambridge followed suit next year, so 1969 saw the centenary of what was at first, unromantically, known as the Non-Collegiate Students' Board. The Vice-Chancellor was the head of the newly created body, while the title of Censor was given to the senior member of the University who performed the duties of a Tutor .
The first Censor was a Trinity man, the Rev. Ralph Benjamin Somerset. His office was in a room in the building until recently known as Fitzwilliam House, and all that the students had to do there was to report five days a week, and occasionally to send the Censor a written report on the progress of their studies. Corporate life, for the moment, was wholly lacking. But Mr Somerset encouraged it, and to give the little society a better standing in Cambridge he strongly urged that it should have the use of some building belonging to the University itself.
It might have seemed, back in r869 and for the next few years, that Cambridge had returned, in a small-scale way, to the days when membership of a college was in no way essential to membership of the University. After all, non-collegiate students had once been the overwhelming majority of those up at Oxford and Cambridge. But things had changed much by r869. The College had become dominant and could offer strong inducements to the best of those who had started their University career elsewhere.
The history of Cambridge's non-collegiate students has been one of assimilation to college life, leading on to the coming of fully collegiate status. The college system, immensely strong after nearly seven centuries of growth and acceptance, has remained the triumphant essence of Cambridge's academic life.
The original non-collegiate body at Cambridge was a good deal smaller than its Oxford counterpart which got considerable encouragement, and fairly generous financial aid, from the University. By the end of its first academic year, nineteen residents had kept the third term. The students were encouraged to meet and to form clubs, and in 1874 some rooms for those meetings were hired in the building which already contained the Censor's office. This house had been built, in 1727, by the Halsteads who were a local brewing family; it is an excellent specimen of the early Georgian Cambridge town house. Cohen the non-collegiate body first used part of it the house was known as 31 Trumpington Street; some years passed before it gained the name later passed on to the fully fledged Fitzwilliam College.
Sporting clubs apart, a small library and a common room were soon provided in the Trumpington Street house. The men remained, however, in lodgings, and their social life was much less closely knit than in the colleges. Many of the best non-collegiate men migrated, and in some years the new society's losses to the well-established colleges were as much as a third, or even half.But things slowly improved, especially after the Non-Collegiate Board bought Halstead House, reorganised it inside, and in 1892 reopened it as a larger, better equipped headquarters than the University's non-collegiate element had so far been able to use. They sought a title more distinctive than a number in Trumpington Street, and as their fine Georgian headquarters stood opposite the Fitzwilliam Museum they called the house Fitzwilliam Hall. The then Earl Fitzwilliam kindly allowed the society to use his arms in a coat which included, in chief, those of the University. But one has to remember that this Fitzwilliam name comes solely from the geographical nearness of Halstead House to the Museum. Had the Museum been sited elsewhere (as it might well have been), or had the Non-Collegiate Board fixed its headquarters in some other building, the name of the present Fitzwilliam College would not have been what it is.
From the time of its naming, and from the complete occupation of the house in Trumpington Street, Fitzwilliam Hall moved forward in the development of its corporate life. Though it little resembled what people now accepted as a normal college, the warmth and intensity of that corporate life was little affected during the decades when Fitzwilliam men made do with their home opposite the great classical museum. One could, indeed, claim that the very difficulties which beset the comparatively new society helped on a specially devoted collegiate feeling. Things were much assisted when in 1907, Mr W. F. Reddaway, of King's, was appointed Censor. Migrations to other colleges sharply dropped, dining in hall became normal, a chapel was fitted out, and a hostel was provided for the lodging of some Fitzwilliam men.
Fitzwilliam Hall shared fully in the University's great expansion soon after the end of the first World War. Some nearby houses were bought to provide hostel accommodation for some of the numerous Fitzwilliam men, and the first moves wore now made towards the society's status as an independent college. But a check soon came, the non-collegiate status of Fitzwilliam still being thought helpful in providing an inexpensive university education for those who could not afford the colleges.
Despite some improved provisions for its corporate life Fitzwilliam's numbers temporarily fell, with its membership reaching a low point of 147 men in 1926. But the change, in 1934, of its title to Fitzwilliam House, and the ending of the term 'non-collegiate' for its members, suggested that an advance to full collegiate rank might not be far away. Despite the cramped, uncollegiate nature of its Georgian house, the main aspects of college life were pursued there, on the river, and on the playing fields. A few Fitzwilliam men were older than the normal undergraduate age, while between the wars men from Fitzwilliam were relatively more numerous in Fitzwilliam than in some of the colleges.
The second World War caused the complete, though temporary, fading out of Fitzwilliam. But as soon as it ended there was an astonishingly swift rebirth. With more than 400 students in 1950 Fitzwilliam found itself the fifth largest society in the University; among its members more than 100 research students were a foretaste of the great wave which has swept over Cambridge in the post-war years. It was a pioneering move, again foreshadowing what has since happened almost everywhere else in Cambridge, when these post-graduates at Fitzwilliam were given a club room of their own. Ninety of those who were on Fitzwilliam's books in 1950 came from overseas, twenty-eight countries being represented.
Since 1952 the history of Fitzwilliam has largely consisted of the gradual yet final stages by which it attained the full status of a college. That year the Regent House approved a policy whereby the corporate life of the revived, much enlarged Fitzwilliam House should be encouraged, with its continuance on the basis of a membership of 400 or more made possible by the erection of new, larger, and properly collegiate buildings. A fund was started, considerable sums were raised by Fitzwilliam men, and King's contributed handsomely in memory of W. F. Reddaway. It proved essential, however, for the University to bear most of the necessary capital cost, and it found itself able to provide money at first earmarked for other projects which have so far failed to reach fruition.By 1960 the site for the new college, lying between Huntingdon Road and Storey's Way, had been found and Mr Denys Lasdun was preparing his plans, working outwards, as in a helical movement but with angled corners, from the central, most communal building which contained the hall, the library, and the combination rooms. Work soon started, and by the middle of 1963 the first buildings, in their unquestioningly 'contemporary' style, with their fine display of brickwork, and with their study bedrooms restricted to the modest size laid down by the University Grants Committee, were finished and in use. Fitzwilliam men, now far too many for them to live a contented college life in the Trumpington Street house, an I with a wide range both of sporting, academic and social pursuits, that could now be sure they had headquarters more obviously suited to their modern needs.
The University authorities were now satisfied that the new buildings, and the society's endowed income coming in from the money subscribed, justified the seeking of an independent college status. The final phase of the non-collegiate body's evolution now set in. A charter was granted on 10 September 1966, and the full status of a college followed next day.
Since the move to the new buildings, Fitzwilliam men have increased in numbers, and the college's undergraduate figure of about 450 is the third largest in Cambridge. The buildings themselves have been enlarged, though Mr Lasdun's full plan is not yet complete. About half of the college's men live in, and Fitzwilliam's corporate life, though perhaps no stronger than in the more difficult years when it was a struggle to keep it going in any form, is full of vigour.
The college's athletic successes were considerable, and three of 1968's winning Boat Race crew were Fitzwilliam men. Post-graduate and research students make up a high proportion of Fitzwilliam's members, and the college's undergraduates read a wide range of subjects. A recent move is the attachment to Fitzwilliam as affiliated students of some of the men studying in Cambridge's various theological colleges. Occasional dining in Hall symbolises the connection of these men with the society which has now after nearly a century won through to the status which seemed very remote in the first days of the Non-Collegiate Students' Board.
