| Colleges of the University of Cambridge Lucy Cavendish College |
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| Named after | Lucy Cavendish | ||||||||||||||||||
| Established | 1965 | ||||||||||||||||||
| Admittance | Women only aged 21 or over | ||||||||||||||||||
| President | Professor Janet Todd | ||||||||||||||||||
| Undergraduates | 110 | ||||||||||||||||||
| Graduates | 110 | ||||||||||||||||||
| Location | Lady Margaret Road | ||||||||||||||||||
| College website | |||||||||||||||||||
| Boat Club website | |||||||||||||||||||
Lucy Cavendish College is a constituent college of the University of Cambridge. It is a women-only college, which admits only postgraduates and undergraduates aged 21 or over.
The college was founded in 1965 by women researchers and lecturers of the University of Cambridge who felt that women were not thoroughly represented within the university. It was originally known as the Lucy Cavendish Collegiate Society. It moved to its current site in 1970, was granted consent to call itself "Lucy Cavendish College" in 1986, and gained the status of a full college of the university by Royal Charter in 1997.[1]
The college is named in honour of Lucy Cavendish (1841–1925), who campaigned for the reform of women's education.
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The origins of Lucy Cavendish College are traceable to "The Dining Group" which sought to provide the stimulation of high table conversation to its members who were not Fellows of Colleges.[2] At the time there were only two women's colleges in Cambridge, Girton and Newnham, and these were not enough to accommodate the large numbers of women recruited to teach and provide academically based services.[3]
The college was named in honour of Lucy Caroline Cavendish, a pioneer of women's education and the great aunt of one of its founders, Margaret Braithwaite.[4]
The first president of Lucy Cavendish College, from 1965 to 1970, was Anna McClean Bidder, one of the founding members of "The Dining Group" and a zoologist specializing in cephalopod digestion;[3] this accounts for the presence of the nautilus shell in the college crest.[5]
Anne Bidder was succeeded by Kate Bertram until 1979, Phyllis Hetzel,[6] Dame Anne Warburton (the first female British ambassador in 1976), Baroness Pauline Perry, and Dame Veronica Sutherland.
The current and 7th President of Lucy Cavendish is Professor Janet Todd, internationally renowned scholar of early women writers, who took up the post in 2008.
For the first few years of the College's existence it occupied rooms in Silver Street and then Northampton Street until it moved to its current site in 1970 on the corner of Madingley Road and Lady Margaret Road, near Westminster College and St John's College, which provided some of the land.[7]
The majority of the buildings, including Warburton Hall and the Library were completed in the 1990s.[7]
In 1991 the college bought Balliol Croft, a neighbouring house to its grounds and former home of the economist Alfred Marshall and his wife Mary Paley Marshall, with whom he wrote his first economics textbook. The building was renamed Marshall House in his honour and used for student accommodation until 2001 when it was converted back to its original layout and used as the President's Lodge.[8]
Lucy Cavendish has one of the most diverse student bodies in the University community. It has approximately 280 students divided equally between Undergraduates and Graduates. The college web site states that "Students from every corner of the UK mix with students from around the world. Students with ‘Access’ qualifications interact with students who have studied for A-levels and the International Baccalaureate. Former bankers, singers, journalists and police officers mix with recent graduates of universities from around the world. Women come at any age to study any subject offered by the University."[9]
Following the 2007 announcement that Oxford University's last remaining women-only college, St Hilda's, would admit men, Cambridge is the only university in the United Kingdom where colleges have admissions policies that discriminate on the basis of gender.[10][11] Lucy Cavendish is the most notable example of these as it not only bars male students but male staff are also not eligible to become fellows of the college.[12]
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