“I didn’t begin to write my speech for the O.S.D.S.* debate until Thursday morning, and I timed it to take exactly two minutes. I was the Proposer and the motion was, ‘That the reluctance of the modern woman to marry is a benefit to Society.’ I wore my white satin with the pink on it and, to my surprise, wasn’t… Read More »February 1914 : Somerville College Before the Outbreak of War
“I realised that I could not have any chance at all” Vera Brittain, ‘March 16th-20th, Somerville College, Oxford’ Chronicle of Youth In March 1914, Vera Brittain visited Somerville to take the College entrance examination. She had applied not just for a place but for a scholarship, despite advice from the Principal, Emily Penrose, not to try for the latter. Her anxiety… Read More »March 1914: Vera Brittain is Awarded an Exhibition
‘He had served the College for twelve and a half years with fidelity and real affection; and it was a pleasure to both Staff and Students to be able to express their appreciation of his faithful service and that of his wife in the form of presents to them for their new house in Ferry Hinksey Road: a clock and… Read More »April 1914: Scroggs Retires
On 9th May 1914, the Polish anthropologist and Somerville student Marya Czaplicka applied for funds for an expedition to Siberia. Marya Czaplicka had arrived in England in 1911 to take the diploma course in anthropology at Somerville. Intelligent and charming, she was a mature student and accomplished scholar. Speaking Russian in addition to Polish and English, she was uniquely placed to… Read More »May 1914: The Launch of Miss Czaplicka’s Siberian Expedition
‘The hall proved ideal for dancing: the floor was all that could be desired.’ Somerville College Log Book, June 1914 Commemoration Week, the week after the end of Trinity Term, is a traditional time for balls in Oxford, and in 1914 Somerville held a Commemoration Dance in its new hall. The JCR sought permission for an end of term dance from… Read More »June 1914: The Commemoration Dance
‘Exactly a fortnight before the world as I had known it crashed into chaos, I went to Leek to take my Oxford Senior.’ Vera Brittain, Testament of Youth. The long vacation in 1914 should have been a time of rest, recuperation and preparation for students and Fellows. Many of the Senior Common Room (SCR) used the vacations to travel and work on… Read More »July 1914: The Uncertainties of the Long Vacation
In 1919, a student called Margaret Bunbury Foote came up to Somerville to read English. Her father was a clergyman and her mother a suffragette and member of the Women’s Social & Political Union. Amongst the papers Margaret Foote was later to leave to Somerville College was the travel diary she had kept during her summer holiday in 1914 when,… Read More »August 1914: “To Germany in 1914”
“It is impossible even in writing a college letter to pass over in silence the subject which is filling everyone’s mind. In Oxford we are reminded at every turn of the greater happenings…” Oxford Letter, Somerville Students Association Annual Report 1914 Initially, the outbreak of war had comparatively little impact on Somerville College; the long vacation was drawing to a… Read More »September 1914: the Contribution of Non-Combatants
In October 1914, thirty six new students arrived to begin their university careers at Somerville. Amongst these ‘freshers’ were Vera Brittain, the future author and playwright Muriel St Clare Byrne and another English exhibitioner, Una Ellis-Fermor, who would become a distinguished academic. In her diary, Vera Brittain recorded the excitements of student life, her impressions of the University of Oxford… Read More »October 1914: Vera Brittain Arrives for the New Academic Year at Oxford
Between 1914 and 1915, over two hundred thousand Belgians were to flee to Britain and Oxford became one of many centres to offer accommodation and assistance to some of those refugees. As well as the widely held public sympathy for Belgium’s plight, academics had been outraged by the German attack on Louvain in August 1914, during which the University library… Read More »November 1914: ‘At Home’ to the Belgians