A Short History of Newnham College, CambridgeGardner, Alice
History
A Short History of Newnham College, Cambridge
Gardner, Alice
Newnham College
It was under the same roof as the North Hall that the much needed
lecture rooms were raised. There were at first three. Later when a
large number of small rooms for private teaching were made in the
Pfeiffer Building, two of the lecture rooms proper were knocked into
one, thereby giving the College one room large enough to accommodate
(if desks were removed) about a hundred people. It was chiefly by
pressure from Miss Gladstone that an infirmary or hospital was built,
adjoining the North Hall, but with its separate entrance. This has
often proved useful in checking the spread of infectious ailments among
the students or the servants. A chemical laboratory had already been
erected in the garden at a respectful distance from the original Hall.
Its equipment was mainly the task of Miss Penelope Lawrence, afterwards
headmistress of Roedean School, Brighton. A laboratory for the study
of Biological subjects was provided in the town in 1884, a disused
Congregational chapel being adapted to the purpose. Mrs. Sidgwick
and her sister, Miss Alice Balfour, were the principal donors, and
the laboratory was appropriately named after their brother, Francis
Maitland Balfour, whose promising and already distinguished career had
been cut short by an accident in the Alps. For many years, these two
laboratories formed the training ground of a large number of students,
who did much to supply the demand for improved science teaching in
schools and colleges for girls. In the Chemical Laboratory Miss Freund
and in the Balfour Laboratory Miss Greenwood (now Mrs. Bidder) and
Miss Saunders presided for many years, carrying on both teaching and
research. (Both Miss Freund and Mrs. Bidder were former students of
Girton.) In course of time, the opening of the University laboratories
to women students rendered these buildings less necessary, and they are
at present let for University purposes.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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