College Hall and Chenies Street Chambers

An interview with historian Amara Thornton discussing College Hall and Chenies Street Residences, two key residences for women in 19^th century Bloomsbury.

Interviewed by Maren Meinhardt 27 April 2023

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Amara Thornton is working on a project on the history of women in archaeology,
history and heritage in Britain, between 1870 and 1950 called Beyond Notables –
Beyond Notability: www.beyondnotability.org

Edited excepts from the interview:

College Hall …. was founded in 1882 so that women who were studying near University College would have a collegiate facility to live in, along the lines of women’s colleges at Oxford and Cambridge. It was founded by two sisters working with other people, Thomazine Mary Browne and Annie Browne.

Rosa Morison was the first Lady Superintendent of women’s students at UCL, and she was the Honorary Vice President of College Hall. Eleanor Grove was the first Principal of the Hall. Thomazine Mary Browne was on the Council and she was also the Honorary Secretary.

The Hall provided accommodation on varying scales for varying amounts of money to students who presented programmes of work, which were judged by committee (which included Millicent Fawcett). Some were studying at UCL but others were at other Bloomsbury institutions, for example the London School of Medicine for Women and Slade School of Art. There were spaces within the Hall for group activity and group dining. They started with one building on Byng Place and then they bought the next two buildings to accommodate a growing number of people. The building on Byng Place is still there but College Hall itself, which still runs as a residence, is on Mallet Street now.

The accommodation fee was between 51 and 75 guineas, which covered a session of 33 weeks, a UCL session. It’s not cheap. For that, if you were able to meet that cost, you could take part in the schedule of the day and invite your friends over and whatever. If you wanted to be outside the Hall after seven, you had to let the Principal know where you were going.

19th century residents include:

Caroline Sturge, medical officer

Dorothy Selboe

Eleanor Mary Burd, artist

Evelyn Dickinson, doctor, novelist

Frances Ivens, obstetrician, gynaecologist

Jessie Mothersole, artist

Louisa Macdonald, educationalist, suffragist

Louisa Martindale, gynaecologist

Lydia Burtt Spencer

Mary Brodrick, archaeologist

Maud Chadburn, surgeon

Rukhmabai, doctor

Chenies Street Residential Chambers was a residence for professional women. There were a growing number of doctors, other medical professionals, like administrators and inspectors or artists or teachers, writers, researchers, political campaigners, lecturers, missionaries, that kind of thing studying and you see that reflected in the professional cohort going to Chenies Street Chambers (possibly from College Hall).

Chenies Street Chambers is a block of flats. It doesn’t have the community thing that College Hall is trying to cultivate. That doesn’t mean that people who lived in Chenies Street Chambers didn’t talk to one another. But it wasn’t necessarily meant to facilitate the whole building coming together in group contexts. It was really built to accommodate professional women in an atmosphere in which there are other professional women around but it’s also meant to cultivate a sense of independence.

In the late 19th century the fees for Chenies Street Chambers were between six to eight pounds a month, which is fairly hefty. You could rent one or more than one room and there were also private rooms that you could book for dining or dinner parties or other kinds of functions.

You would apply to a Lady Superintendent, or Lady Manager, with references.

Ellen Rope’s ‘Hope’, part of the decoration of Chenies Street Chambers (image courtesy of Elizabeth Crawford) The bas-relief commissioned to decorate the Women’s Building at the 1893 Exposition was in 1897 erected over fireplaces and in alcoves at the Chenies Street Residential Chambers dining room.

19th century residents include:

Adeline Sergeant, author

Anna Anderson Morton, Egyptologist

Charlotte Fell Smith, historian

Emily Hobhouse, welfare campaigner and pacifist

Emily Penrose, teacher

Ethel Williams, doctor, suffragist

Florence Reason, artist

Jane Harrison, classical scholar

Mary Millington Lathbury Evans, scholar, archaeologist

Margaret Sharpe, doctor

Mary Brodrick, archaeologist