Newnham College, Cambridge

Newnham college buildings from the gardens

Newnham College is one of the colleges of the University of Cambridge, England. It is for women only and has about 500 students. It was created in 1871 by Henry Sidgwick who wanted to make education more available to women. It was built at a time when most colleges where for men only. It was the second college to allow women after Girton. It started just as a group of houses in Regent Street. In 1875 the first buildings were finished in Sidgwick Avenue and the college moved there.

Newnham College has beautiful large gardens that the students can walk on. This is different from the other colleges where only Fellows can walk on the grass. It also has one of the largest libraries in Cambridge, with more than 90,000 books.^[1]

Some very important people have studied here. Philippa Fawcett, for example, was the first woman to get the best result in the mathematics course in Cambridge in 1890. Virginia Woolf based her famous book The Room of One's Own around Newnham College. Other people to have studied here include:

Diane Abbott, a Member of Parliament
Rosalind Franklin, who helped discover DNA
Sylvia Plath, an American poet

Newnham College, Cambridge Media

Sidgwick Hall and the Sunken Garden.
Pfeiffer Arch – the main entrance to the college before the Porters' Lodge moved to Sidgwick Avenue
The Old Labs, converted from a laboratory to performance space
Dame Emma Thompson, actress, writer
Dame Jane Goodall, primatologist
Patricia Hewitt, former government minister
Diane Abbott, Member of Parliament
Clare Balding, television presenter
Sidgwick Hall and the sunken garden of Newnham College.
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