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‘Brutalism Among the Ladies’: Modern Architecture at Somerville College, Oxford, 1947-67

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  12 January 2016

Alistair Fair
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In 1945, Janet Vaughan, a distinguished haematologist, became Principal of Somerville College, Oxford, her Principalship lasting until her retirement in 1967. Described in her obituary as ‘a woman of extraordinary vitality and not a little impatience’, Vaughan — awarded the DBE in 1957 — played a key role in steering the college through a period of major change in British Higher Education. Not least amongst the changes was a significant growth in the number of students at university across the country, which resulted in numerous, often high-profile, construction projects. Somerville, which had been founded in 1879 as the University of Oxford's second college for women, was not untouched by this development, and at Vaughan's retirement party, her colleague, the Nobel Prize-winning chemist Dorothy Hodgkin, referred to the several new buildings completed during the previous two decades. The college's post-war building campaign had begun modestly with two small infill developments by Geddes Hyslop in 1948–50 and 1954–56.

Type
Research Article
Information
Architectural History , Volume 57 , 2014 , pp. 357 - 392
Copyright
Copyright © Society of Architectural Historians of Great Britain 2014

References

Notes

1 Barbara Harvey and Louise Johnson, ‘Obituary: Dame Janet Vaughan’, The Independent, 12 January 1993, online at www.independent.co.uk/news/people/obituary-dame-janet-vaughan-1478124.html (accessed on 7 April 2014): ‘in most of the changes occurring in Somerville during the previous 22 years, and all the really important ones, Vaughan had been the prime mover’.

2 Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Eng.c.5642, C. 178, Notes of a talk given by Dorothy Hodgkin on the retirement of Janet Vaughan, 1967.

3 Pevsner, Nikolaus and Sherwood, Jennifer, The Buildings of England: Oxfordshire (Harmondsworth, 1974), p. 252.Google Scholar

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5 The college's archive preserves key committee papers, correspondence and drawings. Arup Associates also has an extensive archive, but the papers relating to the Somerville projects are related to construction and date from 1962 and afterwards (Information from Kate Harper, Arup Associates’ archivist, February 2014).

6 Dowson, Philip, ‘A Room of One's Own’, Architectural Design, 38 (1968), pp. 164–72 (p. 164).Google Scholar

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23 Ibid., p. 182; SCA, folder of correspondence with University College, November 1947-May 1953; Council minutes, 17 February 1954; Paper, n.d., ‘Long term future development of the College’, filed with Informal Council minutes; Paper, ‘College development plans’, January 1953, filed with minutes of Informal Council; minutes of Informal Council, 16 January 1951 and 20 January 1953.

24 SCA, Building Programme file, letters from Geddes Hyslop to Janet Vaughan, 14 May 1947 and 23 June 1947. For the other architects considered, see correspondence of December 1947 to Thomas Worthington, J. Birkett and Thomas Rayson, filed in a box marked ‘Hostel’. See also correspondence with Frederick Gibberd of 2 and 3 February 1948, in the same ‘Hostel’ box. Gibberd was working elsewhere in the university at this time: Oxford University Drama Commission, Report of the Oxford University Drama Commission (Oxford, 1948).

25 SCA, Hostel box, letter of 12 March 1948 to Thomas Rayson.

26 Hyslop's appointment at King's owed much to his Bloomsbury connections, not least his friendship with King's Fellow George ‘Dadie’ Rylands, who was a member of the Building Committee. See Cambridge, King's College Archive, KCGB/5/1/4/15, minute of 12 October 1946 for the committee membership; also, in the same archive, GHWR/5/246, a photograph showing Hyslop, Rylands, Mortimer, Eardley Knolleys, Janet Bacon, Edward Bates, Anne Barnes, on a Hellenic cruise, 1928. His pre-war practice had concerned large houses in the country, and presumably his move into education reflected the lack of such work in the post-war years.

27 SCA, Council minutes, 15 February 1956 and 23 May 1956; London, RIBA Drawings and Archives Collections, RIBA/HyG, Box 14, invoice of 19 November 1956, which relates to ‘proposed building Little College Street [sic], Principal's House, Sanatorium. Fee for professional services rendered, preparation of sketch designs and approximate estimate of cost £125'.

28 SCA, Paper, ‘Long Term future development of the college’ [c. 1952].

29 Adams, , Somerville for Women, p. 271 Google Scholar. See also Thomas, , ‘College Life’, pp. 210–11.Google Scholar

30 SCA, minutes of Informal Council, 13 June 1956.

31 SCA, minutes of Informal Council, 13 June 1956 and 17 October 1956.

32 SCA, minutes of Informal Council, 24 October 1956.

33 Adams, , Somerville for Women, p. 273.Google Scholar

34 SCA, minutes of Informal Council, 4 December 1957.

35 SCA, minutes of Informal Council, 15 February 1956.

36 SCA, minutes of Informal Council, 7 March 1956.

37 SCA, minutes of an ‘Extraordinary meeting of Informal Council', 14 May 1958.

38 Oxford University Design Society, New Oxford: a Guide to the Modern City (Oxford, 1962), n.p.Google Scholar

39 Ibid., n.p.

40 That women have often been particularly innovative in their architectural patronage and interests is evident from Friedman's, Alice T. Women and the Making of the Modern House (New Haven and London, 2007).Google Scholar

41 SCA, uncat., memo by Mary Proudfoot, 18 June 1958.

42 Philip Dowson, interviewed by author on 5 September 2011; Tim Sturgis [Arup Associates’ project architect], interviewed by author on 26 October 2011.

43 Brawne, , Arup Associates, pp. 36–39,167–69.Google Scholar

44 See n. 8 above.

45 SCA, Hostel box, letter to Thomas Rayson, 12 March 1948.

46 SCA, Library/Holtby box, letter from the College Treasurer to Hyslop, 9 July 1951, and notes on the design by Hyslop of 15 October 1951. The scheme was also made possible by a 1952 bequest: see Adams, , Somerville for Women, p. 272.Google Scholar

47 London, RIBA Drawings and Archives Collections, PA972 / 2 / 5 and 972/2/6, drawings by Hyslop of Hostel building, 1948–49.

48 SCA, Hostel box, letter from E. Evans to Hyslop, 22 July 1948.

49 SCA, Hostel box, memo of 1 November 1950.

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51 See, e.g., Booth, Philip and Taylor, Nicholas, Cambridge New Architecture (London, 1970), p. 160.Google Scholar

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54 SCA, folder marked ‘Building Fund’, letter from Vaughanto, Janet James, D.G., Southampton University, 8 August 1955.Google Scholar

55 Adams, , Somerville for Women, p. 260.Google Scholar

56 Jane Hands, interviewed by author on 5 August 2011.

57 Oxford English Dictionary, online at http:/ /www.oed.com/search?searchType=dictionary&q=upmarket (accessed on 27 January 2014).

58 Barbara Harvey, pers. comm., 21 August 2011.

59 SCA, memo by Mary Proudfoot, 18 June 1958.

60 SCA, Council minutes, 12 March 1958, and papers circulated to Council of the same date.

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62 SCA, Council minutes, 12 March 1958, and papers circulated to Council of the same date. Other projects for which Powell and Moya also declined to be considered included: in Oxford, St Anne's College; in Cambridge, Corpus Christi's Leckhampton graduate development at Cambridge, Robinson College, and the History Faculty.

63 SCA, Council minutes, 12 March 1958, and papers circulated to Council of the same date.

64 SCA, minutes of an ‘Extraordinary meeting of Informal Council', 14 May 1958.

65 Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS.Eng.c.5581, A.189 and A.191, documents relating to Hodgkin's trip to Spain.

66 Harvey, pers. comm.; Hands, interviewed by author; Dowson, interviewed by author.

67 Hands, interviewed by author.

68 Dowson, interviewed by author; Hands, interviewed by author.

69 Harvey and Johnson, ‘Obituary: Dame Janet Vaughan’.

70 Dowson, interviewed by author.

71 SCA, ‘Ove Arup’ blue folder, 3 November 1958.

72 SCA, folder of Building Committee minutes within box marked ‘Building Programme 1947–69’, notes of meeting with Dowson, Vaughan, Treasurer, February 1959.

73 SCA, folder of Building Committee minutes within box marked ‘Building Programme 1947–69’, meeting of 28 April 1959.

74 Dowson, , ‘A Room of One's Own’, p. 172 Google Scholar; Dowson, interviewed by author.

75 SCA, copy of Arup Report, 26 May 1959.

76 ‘Extension to Somerville College, Oxford’, Architects' Journal, 130.3369 (12 November 1959), pp. 495–96.Google Scholar

77 SCA, minutes of Council, 27 May 1959.

78 SCA, minutes of Informal Council, 28 February 1961 and 20 April 1961.

79 SCA, box marked ‘Little Clarendon Street Stages I, II’, memorandum by Janet Vaughan, 12 November 1963.

80 SCA, box marked ‘Little Clarendon Street Stages I, II’, letter from Tim Sturgis to Janet Vaughan, 13 November 1963.

81 SCA, Ordinary Council / Governing Body minute book, 22 January 1964.

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85 Dowson, interviewed by author.

86 Dowson, Philip, ‘Architects' Approach to Architecture’, RIBA journal, 73.3 (March 1966), pp. 105–15 (p. 109).Google Scholar

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88 This design is illustrated in Smithson, Alison and Smithson, Peter, The Shift (London, 1982), p. 97.Google Scholar

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90 In 2013, the building was remodelled by Niall McLaughlin Architects. A single-storey extension was added on the garden side and the fenestration of the west side of the ground floor was altered.

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92 For a critical view of New College's Sacher Building, which presented an unbroken wall to Longwall Street, see Crook, Joe Mordaunt, The Dilemma of Style: Architectural Ideas from the Picturesque to Postmodernism (London, 1989), p. 265 Google Scholar, which memorably suggested that the architect, David Roberts, was ‘blinded by non-visual dogma’.

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112 SCA, ‘Somerville College Report, 1964', pp. 26–27: the MCR President reported that the building was ‘unique in that there are no rules’.

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118 Harvey and Johnson, ‘Obituary: Dame Janet Vaughan’.

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126 Harvey and Johnson note in ‘Obituary: Dame Janet Vaughan’ that she spent the greater part of each day 100 in the laboratory, invariably responding to reports that she had missed callers to her college office with the question, ‘do they think I sit there knitting?’.

127 Ibid.

128 SCA, minutes of Building Committee, 27 January 1959.

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149 Heynen, Hilde, ‘Modernity and Domesticity: Tensions and Contradictions’, in Negotiating Domesticity: Spatial Productions of Gender in Modern Architecture, ed. Heynen, Hilde and Baydar, Gülsüm (London, 2005), pp. 1–20 (p. 10).Google Scholar

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172 Colvin, Howard, Unbuilt Oxford (New Haven and London, 1983), pp. 166–77Google Scholar. His lack of enthusiasm for contemporary design stretched also to the cars produced by his company, Morris Motors; he likened Alec Issigonis' design for the Morris Minor of 1948 to a ‘poached egg’. See Skilleter, Paul, Morris Minor: the World's Supreme Small Car (London, 1981), p. 41.Google Scholar

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174 SCA, Vaughan, ‘Jogging Along’, n.p.

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