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The Nettleship Collection is the official name for the Library of St Anne’s College. Henry Nettleship (1839–1893) was a Classics scholar described by the ODNB as ‘shy, diffident, hesitant, and sometimes abrupt in manner, inclined to hero-worship, and with a strong sense of injustice’. His wife is more generous in her memorial to him as “an original and delightful companion in a tête-à-tête with one or two friends” [p.xx, Lectures and Essays]
After early academic successes and a period teaching at Harrow, Nettleship married in 1870 and returned to Oxford in 1873 to take up a post as Fellow of Corpus. It was only around this time that University statutes had been lifted which prohibited fellows from marrying. In this climate of changing attitudes towards women, the movement for their education began to take off. Academics and their wives worked together to organise lectures for women and Henry Nettleship helped to set-up the Association for Promoting the Education of Women in Oxford (A.E.W.) in 1878, becoming their main Latin tutor and joining the first committee.
Falling ill in 1882, Nettleship was diagnosed with a weak heart. Told not to be too physically active, he continued with his academic work, spending mornings in the Bodleian and lecturing women students on weekday afternoons. When his brother (Balliol Fellow Richard Lewis Nettleship) died tragically on the slopes of Mont Blanc in 1892, the shock sent Henry into a slow decline which culminated with his death in July the following year.
In January 1895 Nettleship’s widow Matilda donated a large number of his books to the A.E.W. and collections to the tune of £53 were raised by Miss E. Price and Miss A. M. Sellar for a fund to support the purchase of Classics books in his name. The University matched this with a donation of £40 and together, these and the Nettleship collection comprised 750 books. Office space in the attics of the Clarendon Building (at that time used by University administration, and now by the Bodleian Libraries) had been made available for the A.E.W. in the late 1800s and so it was here that Nettleship’s books came to rest, established as the Nettleship Library.
In December 1895 The Fritillary, a collaborative publication between the women’s colleges, included an announcement from S. Gurney (Hon. Librarian) about the opening of the Nettleship Library at the start of that year. Books were to be kept in the office of the A.E.W. and could be taken out during morning office hours. During the afternoon, reference access was available but no borrowing.
The Library would be open and free to all members of the A.E.W. and run by an annually elected Library Committee. A librarian would be appointed every three years to oversee the daily running of the Library. [p.3, 1895, A.E.W. Rules Appendix]Professor Nettleship’s library was almost entirely Classical and the £53 Nettleship fund had been raised for the purchase of further Classics books. Separate gifts were made for Modern History and Mathematics books but it was certainly not a well-rounded collection in 1895. The Fritillary article suggests that attempts had been made to supplement the ‘hall’ libraries as far as possible so that the Nettleship Library was a useful resource for women students. For members of The Society for Oxford Home-Students with no hall at all, it was vital.
The sense of community about the A.E.W. and the Nettleship Library is apparent in its mentions over the next decade or so in The Fritillary. There are reports of surplus subscriptions raised by student society memberships being spent on extra books for the Library, as well as appeals and thanks for the donation of books by women who had completed their study.
By the end of the 1895-6 academic year, the Librarians of Lady Margaret Hall, Somerville College and St Hugh’s Hall had been elected to the Library Committee, several new donations had been received and the collection of books numbered 986 volumes. [p.9-10, 1895-1896, A.E.W. Annual Report]
In 1897, the Council of the A.E.W. raised a further £40 for the purchase of History and English books, though also reported that such History books as were currently available were not being well used. This fund was joined by a donation from a second Mrs Nettleship, this time the widow of Henry’s brother (Richard) Lewis, who donated her husband’s personal library of philosophical works to broaden and expand the Library collection. An Assistant Librarian, Miss Bonner, was appointed to support Miss Elinor R. Price (Hon. Librarian) and together they presided over a collection of a little over 2000 books.
In 1900 Frances M. Wells, the Hon. Librarian, wrote a warm descriptive piece about the Library which is best read in its entirety (here) but includes passages such as:
By 1900, the initial 750 books had grown to over 2,500 and were in danger of overflowing the A.E.W. office into its antechamber. Wells’s description is clear about the generosity of the whole Oxford community in making gifts towards the Library and closes with something about the suggestion and purchase policy:
University academics giving lectures for the A.E.W. often donated their subscriptions for the purchase of relevant books in their subject and this, combined with the introduction of fines for overdue loans and the continued support of benefactors, meant that the Library had a small income for collections, shelving, rebinding and other administrative costs.
In 1901, a letter printed in The Fritillary appeals to the ‘hard-worked Librarian’ for an increase in opening hours so as to accommodate students attending lectures from 11am to 1pm, who would otherwise be unable to take out books. At the same time, much was being said in the Oxford Magazine about the presence of women in the Bodleian (open to women since the early 1880s) who purportedly used the reading rooms there as a sort of waiting-room between lectures. To ease this tension, and to accommodate the ever growing Library, the A.E.W. were granted an additional large room in the Clarendon Building to be fitted with tables, chairs and pots of ink. This new Reading Room doubled the space previously available and meant that the Library could start a reference collection, most significantly with the purchase of a set of the Dictionary of National Biography.
For the A.E.W.’s members, particularly the Home Students, with no college or hall around which to structure their community in these early years, the Nettleship and its Reading Room must have been a focal point. It is said that at the end of term the ‘Nettleship Cab’ made its way around Oxford, collecting up books and returning them to the Clarendon Building where a relay of students would pass them up the stairs and back into the Library [p.8, St Anne’s College, Oxford: An informal history]
The flurry of benefaction in which the Nettleship Library had been established could not last indefinitely and, in 1903-4, the committee reported that the budget for books had fallen again.
To continue to finance the A.E.W., the Nettleship was contributing £10 a year in subscriptions. Meanwhile a grant from the Association of History Tutors to the Library, which had in the preceding years averaged £61, was not awarded.In 1905-6, with book budgets still stretched, the Librarians of the Societies of Women’s Students opted to (conditionally) open their Science collections to all A.E.W. students. By doing so, each library could concentrate on one particular Science specialism with the Nettleship electing to focus on certain periodicals.
In 1907-8 the Nettleship Library exceeded 5000 volumes and in 1904-5, the Honorary Librarian of the Nettleship’s name had appeared for the first time on the list of Officers in the A.E.W. Annual Report. Though a minor change, this nevertheless implied an increase in standing and respect for what was becoming a role with significant responsibility. Entries in the balance sheet entitled ‘Additional Assistance’ were echoed by a call for additional Library funding to support the growing work of the librarians. Loans during this period amounted to around 1000 per term and about half this number over each vacation.
In 1910, the Library had outgrown the organisation of its initial classification scheme and after much consultation with the other librarians of the women’s halls, it was decided to adopt the Dewey Decimal System. Now famous across the world, the scheme was still relatively new in 1910 but already in use at the libraries of Lady Margaret Hall and Somerville College. Special project staffing was arranged in the form of Miss E. O. Bell, who had been trained at the Bodleian. It was only that year that the first female librarian had been appointed there (https://www.bodleian.ox.ac.uk/news/2016/oct-18).
The Bodleian’s Miss Bell and the Nettleship’s Assistant Librarian, Miss V. A. Bonner worked through the summer with “the indefatigable help of many kind volunteers” [p9, 1910-11, A.E.W. Annual Report] to complete the work by October 1911 and the start of Michaelmas Term.
This has proven true as at the time of writing, over one hundred years later, St Anne’s College Library still use an only slightly modified Dewey Decimal Classification.
The newly organised Library was also improved in the same year by the introduction of an additional member of staff. Miss C. E. L. Smith joined the Librarian and Assistant Librarian as a Library Clerk and by doing so, enabled the staffed opening hours to be increased until 1:20pm; something which, in the minds of many A.E.W. students, was long overdue.
Electric lighting was installed in the Office and Reading Room in 1912, enabling them to remain open until 5:45 in term time (the Bodleian next door didn’t receive electric lighting for another 17 years, in 1929). Finances had recovered somewhat from the previous decade and by the following year (1913), the librarians were able to spend £100 on books. Library loans were up and the Committee put this down largely to the work of the Sub-Librarian (whose post had subsumed that of Library Clerk) based in the Reading Room to issue books from 10am until 1:15pm every day. [p7-8, 1913-14, A.E.W. Annual Report].
Funds were stretched during the war as the whole city tightened purse strings but the collection continued to grow at a steady pace of several hundred volumes a year. The Library was able to donate some 100 or so withdrawn books to a ‘Prisoners of War Book Scheme’ and by 1918 had a healthy book budget again and a collection that numbered over 8000 for the first time. D. M. Bigg, the Librarian, reported that loans were up to 3554 volumes over the three terms, though vacation borrowing had fallen to 1800, a figure which she put down to wartime railway restrictions. During the war, Somerville students had been temporarily rehoused in Oriel College and made much use of the Nettleship during this time. [p5, 1918-19, A.E.W. Annual Report].
The Society of Oxford Home-Students had acquired the first true space of their own in 1910. The rental of rooms at 16 Ship Street in central Oxford allowed for the establishment of a Common Room for the students which was furnished with tables and chairs and could be used as a meeting place for clubs and societies.
In 1915 a fiction library ‘The Inter-Collegiate Library of Modern Literature’ was established at Ship Street. For a fee of 1s. 6d. students from any of the women’s societies would have access to a range of modern fiction titles which were outside the collection policy of the Nettleship Library. The Fiction Library was run by students and in its first year had 50 members from across the societies.
In October 1920 the statutes were revised so that women in the University were at long last able to matriculate and graduate with degrees. With this revision came a large number of retrospective graduations for those women who had met all of the criteria over the previous 40 years. A new generation of women saw the opportunity for a degree opening up and numbers of students rapidly increased.
With women officially enrolled, both the Association for Promoting the Education of Women in Oxford (A.E.W.) and the Delegacy for Women Students were abolished in 1921. Women in the collegiate University were part of the University proper and a new body, the Delegacy for Home-Students, was established to represent the interests of the Society of Oxford Home-Students.
The final report of the 1921 Delegacy for Women Students committee had expressed concern about the future of support for the Nettleship Library. The Home-Students were particularly reliant on the Nettleship and donated £10 in 1920 with a pledge of £40 to follow in 1921. The future of space was also in question, as the Clarendon Building attics had officially been the home of the now disbanded A.E.W.. Letters in the St Anne’s archive from around the time show that each of the women’s colleges were committing to support the Library with St Hugh’s subscribing £15 a year and Somerville, £20.
In June 1921 the University received an anonymous donation of £1000 which, among other stipulations, was to provide accommodation for the Nettleship Library. The University purchased Holywell House on the corner of Jowett Walk and Mansfield Road (at 1 Jowett Walk). A number of rooms in the building were assigned to the Nettleship Library and the Society of Home-Students for a rent of £150 per year.
Opening hours at Jowett Walk were the most impressive yet, with the reading rooms available from 9am to 7pm during term.
In February 1922 William Martin Geldart, Vinerian Professor of English Law and Fellow of All Souls, died. Geldart had been chairman of the Delegacy for Women Students from 1911 until its dissolution in 1921. His widow Emily Geldart, in accordance with his wishes, bequeathed his large collection of law books and reports to the University for the use of all women students, alongside a £500 fund. The natural place for this intercollegiate collection was with the Nettleship Library and so the two were soon housed together in Jowett Walk where what had very briefly been the History Room became the Geldart Room. Ivy Williams (who famously became the first British woman to be called to the bar in the same year) had offered to support an extension to the building for Geldart’s books, but it proved impractical [p.22, 1922, The Ship].
In 1930 Mrs. Alice Simpson, who was the mother of a Home-Student, gave to the Society a library of books belonging to her late uncle Harry Rose Barrow. For the first time in its 50 year history, the Society of Oxford Home-Students could be said to have had a library in its own right. Among the 553 books were some quite rare and valuable volumes including a 1643 copy of Bede’s Ecclesiastical History and three incunabula (printed books published before 1501). Lacking a librarian, and particularly one who could catalogue the rare books, the Society approached the Bodleian and Mr R. H. Hill compiled a list. The rare books were lodged with John Johnson and the University Press while the majority found a home at Springfield St. Mary on Banbury Road; a hostel run by the Anglican Community of St Mary’s, Wantage.
A bookplate was designed (pictured below) and the genesis of this new library attracted a series of other small gifts. Resident undergraduates were levied 10s. for a library fund and a library committee was established in 1932. Finances were much stronger than they had been in the early days of the Society, not least thanks to a £10,000 Trust Fund awarded to the Home-Students in 1925 by the Cassel Education Trust. Some reasonable provision could be made for the Home-Students’ Library to grow in conjunction with the Nettleship, and in 1933, the Society was even able to donate £50 to the Bodleian Library’s appeal fund.
The Nettleship Library had served a valuable purpose when founded, both as a central meeting place and as a shared resource for the growing body of women students who had no formal status within the University and little space of their own. Following the resolution to award degrees to women in 1920, the women’s halls and colleges gradually began to look inward and focus on the growth of their own libraries. As previously mentioned, the Home-Students were particularly keen to support the Nettleship and were subscribing a larger sum than the other societies in proportion to the greater use by their students. The two letters pictured below from the treasurer at Somerville College in 1930 to Miss Bigg are an insight into the changing use of the Nettleship. Somerville’s own library had grown and Miss Bigg’s penned-in message of 17th May states that usage of the Nettleship by Somerville students accounted for only 5% of borrowing figures. It is no surprise to read that Somerville elected to drop their contribution to £3 a term.
In Trinity Term 1934, and in accordance with the Nettleship Library Statute formulated by the Women’s Property Committee, Congregation agreed to the transfer of ownership of the Nettleship Library to the Home-Students. The motion was led by the Principal of Lady Margaret Hall and supported by all of the Women’s Societies. A letter announcing the change was printed in The Times on 30th May 1934.
The Geldart Library was to retain independence and maintained as a shared resource for all women students in Oxford. Arrangements were made for the Nettleship and Home-Students’ libraries to be amalgamated at Jowett Walk with Miss Bigg confirmed as Librarian, and Misses B. Mure and H. Spender as Sub-Librarians.
In 1936, the Nettleship Library was 15,000 books housed in “four dark little rooms” at Jowett Walk. The Society of Oxford Home-Students, for 60 years now a somewhat nomadic entity, had desperate need of more permanent space to call its own; where clubs and societies could meet but “above all where they can have a really good library” [p.4, Proposed Central Buildings for the Society of Oxford Home Students].
The Annual Report of the Society in 1929 makes brief mention of an anonymous donation for a trust to provide buildings for the Society [p.5, 1929, Society of Oxford Home-Students: Annual Report]. The mysterious benefaction and reportedly mysterious sum of money soon became clearer in Mrs. Hartland, who had been searching in earnest for a site to accommodate the Society’s needs for several years. In 1932 she found it when by chance two houses with adjoining gardens, one on Woodstock and the other on Banbury Road, came up for sale. More fortuitous still was that the houses adjoined 33 Banbury Road, where the Wantage sisters leased Springfield St. Mary; run as a hostel for Home-Students. Mrs. Hartland paid £19,325 for the site and founded a Trust Fund to support the construction of a Society building.
With pressure on from the University to vacate Jowett Walk, good fortune struck again when Mrs. Florence Musgrave left the remainder of her lease on 1 South Parks Road (Musgrave House) to the Society. The house provided a good base for administrative operations as well as rooms for the Principal and tutors. This also had the effect of ensuring that Mrs. Hartland’s new building could be devoted to library and teaching space.
The renowned architect Giles Gilbert Scott had been employed in the early ’30s to design the New Bodleian Library, a vast book-stack that would sink deep into Broad Street and house hundreds of thousands of books. It was with some enthusiasm then, that Grace Hadow (Principal 1929-40) engaged him to design the Society’s new building. She wrote in The Ship of 1935-6 of her excitement at being part of same grand architectural scheme and that it would be worth waiting a year or two if their new building could be said to rank among other ‘architectural icons’ [pp.28-33, 1935, The Ship].
Mrs. Hartland’s Trust Fund was valued at £15,000, perhaps enough to build one module of a larger building but not enough to support all of the Society’s needs immediately. Gilbert Scott’s design was a clever one, a large building with all that the Society needed, but that could be made in three modules as funds became available. The first, for which £15,000 would suffice, would contain just the library and lecture rooms. Even then, the daunting sum of £5000 needed to be raised as an endowment to support running costs. The Ship of these years reports the charming fundraising initiatives of students and alumnae as they ran dances, whist and tennis tournaments, and sold sweets to contribute what they could to the endowment fund. The projected costs for the whole building were £65,000 – a further £50,000 on top of the Trust Fund.
Once the design had been approved, the first wing of Hartland House sprung up in a little over a year, being structurally finished in October 1937. With the New Bodleian under construction from 1936 to 1940, the Society’s little library up the road must have felt like an interesting side project to Gilbert Scott, and perhaps even somewhere to try out designs or materials. Mrs. Hartland remained involved in the minutiae of the design, helping to choose materials and even going so far as offering to tear down several barns on her own property so that their red-flecked stone might be employed. Fortunately, this was deemed unnecessary though her contribution is evident elsewhere in the motto inscribed on the South side of the building: “Get knowledge, get riches, but with all thy getting, get understanding”. She was also adamant that the building should have a sturdy stone roof and reportedly sold several of her personal treasures to contribute funds towards the extra cost.
Miss Bigg (the Librarian of the Nettleship) retired after 18 years in 1937 and a new librarian, (Mary) Christabel Draper, managed the move of the Nettleship books from Jowett Walk into their new lodgings during the Christmas Vacation.On 16th January 1938, a ‘Blessing of the House’ service saw the building open for use for the first time. An official opening ceremony was planned for the summer but the Library was very much in use before then, as evidenced in the amusing excerpt below; taken from a letter to Giles Gilbert Scott from Grace Hadow:
The Library design, with the Geldart Law Library housed separately and opposite to the Librarian’s office, ensured that existing access arrangements could continue. The Law Library would remain open to students of all the women’s colleges, whilst the Main Reading Room was for Society students only.
An official opening ceremony was held on 16th July, 1938. The Vice-Chancellor, Mrs. Hartland, Giles Gilbert Scott, the Principal, Tutors, Friends, some 200 Old Students and a group of American summer school students were in attendance. Mrs. Hartland herself opened the building with a silver master-key. Opinion was divided over the carved beavers above the West door, but the Society’s new Library itself was a resounding success.
Canon Claude Jenkins (1877–1959) was a historian, librarian and Church of England clergyman. Regius Professor of Ecclesiastical History and a Canon of Christ Church from 1934 until his death, he was also known as an eccentric and a bibliophile whose passion for books bordered on bibliomania. When he died on 17th January 1959, it was a surprise to many to find his will dictate that St Anne’s College Library should have first pick of his books:
Jenkins was a recognisable figure in Oxford with his antiquated clerical robes and shovel hat. In 1910, he had been appointed Librarian of Lambeth Palace Library; a job which he approached with some vigour until his Christ Church Professorship in 1934. After this point he ran the library by post, having hired an assistant (out of his own pocket) to see to the day to day affairs. He clung to the position until 1952 and even then, remained Honorary Librarian until his death in 1959.
Extraordinarily widely read, he sat on as many as 50 committees at once to which he was a knowledgeable contributor of current affairs and anecdotes. Senior Librarian at the Oxford Union for 20 years, he rarely missed a debate and was always heavily involved in discussing book purchases. He lectured with an ancient alarm clock that went off at intervals and reminded him to stop or change the subject and delivered his sermons in a sweet, silvery tenor (on one occasion, managing to incorporate a recommendation for a second-hand bookshop!).
Whether driven by his work at Lambeth or an earlier interest, there is little doubt that Jenkins had an obsession with book collecting. At the time of his death, the five-roomed house he occupied in Christ Church’s Tom Quad was full to capacity. Estimates vary from a conservative 30,000 to the seemingly impossible 70,000 books stacked around the house. Jenkins was known to holiday in Malvern and Tunbridge Wells, where he perused second hand bookshops, often returning with crates of books. Below are just two of the many descriptions of his house:
His cousin, Jennie, who corresponded with St Anne’s after his death, wrote that she would “never forget (her) horror and distress when (she) visited his house 20 years ago”.
What followed was a ‘mighty treasure-hunt’ as the librarian, Principal, Fellows and students of St Anne’s descended on Jenkins’s house at Christ Church to survey and make their selections for the library. Electing to take somewhere in the region of ten thousand books, this still left an enormous number for the other libraries lower down his list to choose from. Wherever Jenkins had encountered a subject, he had delved deeper to amass primary sources and reference works, background reading and translations (or originals). In the aftermath, student volunteers helped to dust, sort and list the haul, which ranged from 16th Century rare books to popular novels and obscure local histories.
Among his own books were large numbers taken from various libraries around the world and never returned. When sorted and boxed up, there were two whole crate loads for the Vatican Library alone.
Even before the Canon Jenkins bequest, Hartland House’s library was reaching capacity. The influx of thousands of new books from his bequest was enough to push through two planned refurbishments. The North Room, already in use as a book-stack, had an iron grating added and an additional floor full of shelves installed in line with Giles Gilbert Scott’s 1930s design. Secondly, the old SCR Dining Room on the ground floor was re-purposed as the Fulford Library (or Fulford Room) and housed French, German, Greek and Latin literature; the room being so named in recognition of a gift by Lady Catherine Fulford.
Why Jenkins offered first choice of his books to St Anne’s College remains slightly unclear, perhaps he quarrelled with all the more likely beneficiaries or thought that his collection risked being broken up elsewhere. Marjorie Reeves, in her 1979 history of St Anne’s, puts forward a more charming hypothesis, that Jenkins had been struck by a comment made to him at a dinner party by Lady Ogilvie – the Home-Students had begun around a library.
For twenty years after its construction, Hartland House remained the only purpose-built collegiate structure on the Woodstock Road site. In line with Giles Gilbert Scott’s initial design, it had been expanded and a second module opened in 1952. When Mary Ogilvie was appointed Principal in 1953, it sat among the gardens of large houses that were gradually acquired by the College over the next ten years.
In 1959, a dining hall was completed on Woodstock Road. With Hartland House to the North and the linked buildings of Springfield St Mary (run as a hostel for students) to the East, there was the beginnings of a quad forming around the open space of Hartland lawn.
In the late 1950s, the University lifted limits imposed on numbers of women undergraduates. St Anne’s was therefore allowed to expand its student numbers but the Principal was clear that any new students must have a guarantee of accommodation; something which she saw as an essential standard. Although some students lived in Springfield St Mary and others in the newly acquired houses on site, there were still many more scattered around North Oxford and at Cherwell Edge (now Linacre College). Some houses that the College had bought the freehold of still had long term occupants and it would be some years before they could all be used by students and tutors.
The Principal was a tireless advocate for the College and formed a friendly relationship with Sir Isaac Wolfson and his wife. They reportedly had a great interest in girls’ education and on 13th June 1960 the Isaac Wolfson Foundation made a grant of £80,000 to the College. Despite having enough capital for just one accommodation building, St Anne’s engaged an architectural firm, Howell Killick Partridge and Amis, to develop an ambitious master-plan for the whole site.
Variously referred to as a ‘string of pearls’, ‘string of beads’ or just ‘the necklace’; the design centered around six large accommodation blocks that would hang like a draped necklace across the Eastern (Banbury Road) side of the College. The largest of these (labelled ‘5’ on the above site plan) was to have been an 11 story tower with views across North Oxford and the University Parks.
Other features included a new Lodge and site entrance to the South West corner on Woodstock Road and a new house for the Principal a little further up. The unified gardens of the Bevington Road houses were in-line to become a tennis court.Most relevant to this article is a building labelled as ‘6’ on the plan, a new circular library that would have stood just North of Hartland House and connected to it through a first floor walkway.
The circular library, like much of the rest of this master plan, never left the concept phase. As a result we know very little about how it might have been laid out inside, or whether it would have been accompanied by a change in the interior configuration of Hartland House.
A combination of money shortages, lack of confidence in the design and a growing preservation movement meant that plans were drastically scaled back. However anyone with even a passing familiarity with St Anne’s today will recognise the accommodation blocks from the design. Springfield St Mary and one of the adjacent houses on Banbury Road were knocked down to make way for Wolfson (1964) and then later Rayne (1968). As pleasing as it is to imagine the unified vision for the College complete with an artificial lake, there is something to be said for the character of the North Oxford houses that have endured. The concrete brutalism of the ’60s polarizes opinion in the present day.
The plans may have been scaled back but the College really did need far more on-site accommodation than it had, and the Library also needed space to expand.The Library space problem was solved in the most straight-forward way, expanding along the first floor of Hartland House into what had until then been staff offices. Looking at the plan below one can see the original four rooms that have today been subdivided into use for Classics and Modern Languages. A new wall was placed at the end of the corridor before the Secretary to the Principal’s office. A few interior walls were knocked through and doors sealed up to be covered with shelving, but the former layout is certainly still recognisable.
As well as expanded space, the Library also increased its opening hours and became twenty-four hour for the first time in 1967, something which few other Colleges could boast.
As for accommodation, a third block christened the Founders’ Gatehouse but later known mainly as ‘Gatehouse’ went some way towards alleviating problems as well as providing space for a new Lodge. It was completed in 1966 and paid for by the generosity of senior members and the University Grants Committee. Sitting directly in front of Hartland House, it provided much needed student bedrooms above a gated entrance from Woodstock Road.
Perhaps in an effort to unify the appearance of the College, the Founders’ Gatehouse was of the same brutalist school as Wolfson and Rayne, but on a smaller scale and neatly rounded. Looking again at the model, it is easy to see a resemblance between the planned circular library and the accommodation block that ended up nearby.
Women’s colleges historically had large collections, due to limited access for women to other libraries within the University. By the late 1970s, the Library’s collection was growing at a pace with the College offering new subjects in the sciences and social sciences. The Geldart Room, which had long been open to members of the other women’s colleges, became only for St. Anne’s members, with College making a financial contribution to offset their loss of this valuable resource. The student body was also growing and College had resolved to become mixed by 1979. The Library’s readership was supplemented by this novel addition of male students, when in that year they were admitted for the first time, along with Lady Margaret Hall of the other women’s colleges. There was some trepidation that co-education could precipitate a decline in academic and moral standards, with the perception of hardworking women and more relaxed male students. There were playful suggestions that the Great Book Losses of 1982-3 were an example of this, though it is not thought that this was a serious accusation against one sex. Either way, such was the extent of discontent at the number of books being removed from the Library in this period, that College authorities put an end to unsupervised 24-hour access and a levy was raised against College members to fund the replacement of the stolen books.
The growth in the Library’s readership and book stock gave cause to an ambitious expansion in 1988, when it took over space on the ground floor of Hartland House which had previously lecture rooms, to house sciences and social sciences. The scheme (by local architect Susan Ganter of Ganter and Kershaw) switched the access to Hartland House through 90 degrees to the North and South doors, establishing the Library under the control of one entrance and exit under the eyes of a staff desk catalogue, photocopier, microform readers.” The new reading room was officially desginated the Cephalosoprin Fund Reading Room, in recognition of having been part-funded by a grant from E.P. Abrahams. This was further recognised with the installation of a stained glass window in his honour. Designed by Hazel Rossotti, it was the first of 60 panels to be added to Hartland House over the next two decades. The Fulford Room was returned to College for other uses but would reclaimed by the Library in 1996, which was filled with high-density mobile shelving for periodicals and other less-used material, growing collections in new subjects, as well as a number of desktop computers, which were becoming more in use by students.
The Library was moving with the times and became the first Oxford college to offer public access to the University’s library database, OLIS, ahead of a change to computerised cataloguing in January 1988. The librarians stopped adding to the card catalogue in 1990, with new additions being added solely to the online catalogue and a programme of retrospective conversion, with the help of project cataloguers, brought over 100,000 items onto the online catalogue over the course of the decade. and moved towards becoming a “multi-media” library with a modest stock of floppy dics and audio cassettes; I look forward to videos and the inter-active book.” Getting connected ot the University’s fibre-optic network should give us access to all sorts of valuable databases 1992-3. OLIS II – 1997. The lending process, which had traditionally been by way of two-part paper slips, was automated (2001-02), releasing library staff from the endless error-prone filing, now performed silently and instantly by the university’s shared library system, OLIS. A reader work station which will offer our readers access to the expanding world of information online, both on OLIS databases and further afield. A computerised self-issue system reduced the instances of books going missing and with no evidence of misbehaviour outside of staffed hours, the expanded opening became permanent. Long opening hours continued, but with a staff presence at all times. In 2009, the Librarian re-introduced 24-hour opening to students with graduate invigilators on duty during evenings and weekends.
The College had a long-held desire to revitalise the frontage on Woodstock Road, but had failed to receive planning permission in the early 2000s for a full redesign. An interim solution was the construction of The Ruth Deech Building, opened in 2005 to provide much needed student accommodation and conference facilities, as well as a new lodge, before a new building could be built. By 2007, the College was again planning a “significant new academic facility which communicates a clear statement of the College’s core values” (Stephen Tall) though it was not yet confirmed that the Library would play a central part in those plans. The Library was, however, in desperate need of more space. It was in possession of the largest working collection of any Oxford college, at approximately 110,000 books. The shelves were “grieviously overfull” and it was evident that it had outgrown Hartland House, having already taken over and repurposed more than half of the building, most of which was not designed with a library in mind.
While it was clear that the collection could not continue to grow and grow, the Library was keen to continue making provision for a measure of net growth in its book stock, estimated at 30 metres per year, with normal weeding processes, to account for the width and depth of reading required of Oxford’s students, the increasing use made of our Library by graduate students and new subjects which were not catered for by the exisiting stock. A Library space utilisation survey carried out in 2011-12 recommended reducing the collection to 90,000 books to allow for future growth. A one-off exercise in slimming the collection could bring this about, combined with a regular programme of withdrawal of less-used material to keep the collection to a manageable size. The Library went about removing runs of printed journals, which were increasingly available and accessed online, donated books that fell outside of the College’s core purposes, and specialist material in subjects the College no longer offered.
Space for readers was as much an issue as space for books. The student body, which had more than doubled since the addition of the New Reading Room in 1988, was one of the largest of any college of the University, reaching nearly 1,000 students. Despite boasting more than 100 study spaces across two storeys in Hartland House, the Library was relatively underequipped with study spaces for a college of its size and many of the spaces were not suitable for the study habits of the day. The Librarian, David Smith, lamented that the Library was “physically and techonolgically lagging behind modern student work habits” (The Ship, 2014-15) lacking power, data points, and quality lighting. Hartland House was also totally bereft of group or informal study space.
Working with Fletcher Priest Architects, planning for the new building started in 2008. The vision was a Library and Academic Centre, which would “define St. Anne’s for generations” TG Ship 2012-13. It would provide space for collaborative study, a centre for research, and a beacon for potential applicants, with space for outreach activities and summer schools. An unexpected benefaction was the starting point for St Anne’s to consider a new building at the front of College, and that a large part of that building should become a new extension to the Library. This initial donation needed to raise £8.5 million needed to fulfil the grand plans. It was thanks to the generosity of the many alumnae and friends of the College.
Throughout the design process, the Library met with students and ran surveys to garner feedback so that the new building could take account of students’ expressed preferences [EXAMPLES], while conforming to fundamental principles and best practices of library design. This included a desire to maintain traditional elements of libraries, such as quiet study areas in close proximity to the book stock, access to the internet and electronic resources, without feeling like a computer lab, and a variety of spaces, including for informal and collaborative study. space for students to work – from individual carrels, to group study rooms, to comfy cubicle chairs –
It was recognised that a new building would need to supplement the existing library rather than replace it. Early stages of the planning envisaged either an underground tunnel or a bridge connecting the first floor of the two buildings.
The new building would stand in place of the 1960s Founders’ Gatehouse and an Edwardian cottage. Its prominent position at the front of the College site, near to the proposed library from the 1960s masterplan, “keeps the Library collections where they have always been, at the heart of the College” would mark open and welcoming and. The Gatehouse did have its champions, though, and a submission to give it listed status was lodged by the Twentieth Century Society and English Heritage. This was ultimately rejected by the Minister for Tourism and Heritage. The Gatehouse was demolished over the course of five days in October 2014. A major benefit of the demolition was the re-opening the aspect of Hartland House, which once again became visible from Woodstock Road after almost 50 years obscured.
The building of a new library and redesign of Hartland was recognised as a chance to modernise the security of the Library’s book stock and a modern electronic security system was installed in both buildings. 85,000 books were tagged with RFID (radio frequency) tags to prepare for the book move. After several months of planning by the Library staff a removal team packed and moved 1,101m of books and journals over the course of 5 days. The New Library received social sciences, sciences, and medicine, as well as lesser-used books in all subjects and the Old Library in Hartland House kept the majority of arts and humanities, and the law collection in the Geldart Room.
The New Library was opened to readers on 3rd January 2017 and officially opened on 20th October by the Vice-Chancellor of the University, Louise Richardson. It was named The Tim Gardam Building in honour of the Principal who led. It anticipates future requirements of the Library and the College that relieves pressure on the existing library and provides new academic facilities.
The cubic structural frame forms a nine-square grid design, on which limestone blocks, reminiscent of book spines, are positioned. Each of the floors are also nine-square grids that fit exactly into the generating lines of the original masterplans. The four internal supporting steel columns serve as ducts for fresh air. On the top floor, diagonal timber bracing with engineered steel connections creates a more intricate grid that defines the saw-tooth north lights.
A key concept of the design was sustainability and flexibility. The design allows the interior to be reconfigured for a huge variety of future uses. The current configuration provides a variety of new study and seminar spaces, as well as over 1.5 kilometres of shelves, housing around 40,000 of the College’s books and periodicals. A grid of steel and timber flitch beams is exposed on the ceilings of all four levels. A careful palette of materials lends a calm, simple appearance to the interiors, while also providing acoustic and climate control.
The central core of the building is wrapped in a frieze featuring the College’s Coat of Arms, glimpses of which are visible from outside the building.
With the new building complete, attention would turn to Hartland House, now eased of its overcrowding, but still somewhat tired, dusty and cluttered. Students expressed fondness for the traditional library, but the lighting, power and data supplies were inadequate to support contemporary modes of study. A total refurbishment of the New Reading Room on the ground floor was planned, which would return the staff desk and main entrance to the West Door, including breakout spaces. Another option was that the Library would return the rooms on the 1st Floor corridor to College for other purposes. It had been recognised that the historic archival material held in the Library as well as College archives were in need of proper listing and physical treatment, and a more suitable place for storage, and that these rooms might be a good location for convenience of access, though any major plans would be after the new library was completed. Other proposed plans included a dedicated room for the Archives and Special Collections, either in the Fulford Room or a renovation of the Library Office, which in itself was formerly a renovated toilet block. which could bring together into one convenient location, with reasonably good climatic conditions, material that was inadequately housed in several unsuitable locations.
The mobile shelving in the Fulford Room had become unsuitable for long-term book storage and was in need of replacement and there are similar products which will store archival material in suspension files (the way the majority of our records are held) as well as books. The Fulford Room was cleared of books and the PCs removed [for this purpose?] in 2018. As with many grand building projects, the plans were not fully realised and the layout of Hartland House Library would remain largely the same, focusing instead on a rolling series of redecoration and improvements to the furniture, lighting, and flooring, and the hiring of a professional archivist, as a first step to improving the College archives.
The luxury of space afforded by the opening of the New Library did, however, allow for two projects to reorganise the book stock in Hartland House. Over a number of years, as part of regular stocktaking exercises, Library staff identified the books from the Canon Jenkins bequest, which had been scattered throughout the Library, so that they could be reunited and fittingly maintained as a discrete collection gives an insight into the intellectual interests of a true Oxford eccentric (AR18). Similarly, almost 2,000 works in a wide variety of fields published by alumnae and members of the College were brought together to create a “St Anne’s Authors” collection, eventually housed in the foyer of the Library in Hartland House (AR22). The primary aim in creating this collection was to showcase the achievements of our alumnae and inspire current students – not just with the idea that they, too, could go on to be published authors (AR22).