‘I have often felt ... that a year in which they should be allowed to expatiate in intellectual pastures in a way that we older women used to do before examinations for women existed, would be of great value. And they can do this best in some University town, where they can have libraries and museums and such lectures and private help as they most require—both hearing and asking questions, rather than being asked and answering.... Many could take one year who could not take three.... The students of St. Hilda’s (Oxford) will have the same opportunities of attending lectures and offering themselves for examinations as at the other Ladies’ Colleges—but we should not press examination upon any who can do better work without. Of course we must be assured that those who come to us will work seriously.’ Yet these reasons were secondary. The purchase of three acres of ground at Oxford was a definite result of her own suffering of mind in 1882. As she emerged from that she at once began to build in vision a house where teachers should be established in the faith, where they should learn to feel that their calling was not to do mere journeyman work, but to deal with the deep problems of life. Finally, it may be added that, whether conscious of it or not, she could not keep herself out of the great movement which was enabling women to share with men many of the incomparable advantages of University life, she had also her own conception of what University life might do for women, and by means of a College at Oxford for her own College at Cheltenham. For Cheltenham the connection would be of great value. Seeing all that might be won by a well-placed move, she planned that move, waited, then made it at the right moment. ‘I bewail your news,’ wrote an Oxford friend to whom she communicated the fact that St. Hilda’s was about to be opened, ‘and disclaim all responsibility for your mistake.’ Miss Beale opened her Hall and begged the students to accept the words _Non frustra vixi_ as their motto, that being the thought which the ammonite at the feet of St. Hilda’s statue now suggested to her. In October 1893 seven students took up their residence at St. Hilda’s. Mrs. Burrows, who had had a College boarding-house at Cheltenham, came to be head of the new Hall, assisted by her daughter, who had been a student at Lady Margaret Hall. The house was formally but quietly opened on November 6 by the Bishop of the diocese, Dr. Stubbs, who placed himself at Miss Beale’s disposal for all arrangements. ‘I will keep,’ he wrote, ‘November 6 free for Miss Beale, but she must let me hear what, when, and how what is to be done’; and to Miss Beale, ‘You do not want me to bring robes on the 6th, do you? A line to reassure me would be grateful.’