Architecture for education

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, ). They were also some of the earliest, making the designs