Shock of the new!

It is easy to forget when we look at the College that as a building it is a relative newcomer to the Oxford scene.  Designed by Thomas Worthington the buildings were completed in 1893, four years after Mansfield College was built.  To provide easy access to these two new colleges Mansfield Road was constructed, connecting South Parks Road and Holywell Street.  The land that Mansfield and HMC purchased to build their new colleges was bought from Merton College from their Holywell Estate.  

It is apparent when you skim through contemporary newspapers that there were significant amounts of building going on across the city.  New roads were being built in North Oxford and major infrastructure projects being put in place (sewerage etc.).  The ‘Alterations and Improvements’ section of The Oxford Journal during the latter part of the nineteenth century provides a great sense of the ambition of the city and the change in the pace of development.   

The Oxford Journal, 14 October 1893, reported on the building of Manchester College, describing the architectural style and position of the new build in rather dry terms. There is no sense from this update of the shock of the newness of the building, springing up on what had been gardens.  It is left to an article from The Women’s Signal, November 1894, to give a sense how brand new the buildings felt.  

Just after the College opened an unnamed reporter from The Women’s Signal came to interview Lucy Toulmin Smith. The fact that the Librarian of the College was a woman was ostensibly why the interview took place - ‘You are the first woman college librarian, you know’ says the interviewer.  Lucy TS replies ‘Yes, but please remember that there is only one Manchester College, and in no other college would a woman have a chance of getting such a post…… Manchester is a very progressive college’.   

The article is fascinating on several different levels, not only because we hear from Lucy Toulmin Smith directly, but also for the descriptions of how spick-and-span and pristine the College felt.  The reporter says on having driven to the College through the streets of Oxford in the sunshine ‘How painfully new for Oxford!’.  She goes on to say: 

Newness is the predominating feature, at present, of the fine building in which Manchester has settled down at last after its wanderings.  Strikingly new in the cleanliness of its exterior, overpoweringly modern in the smooth, untrodden oak floors, the broad corridors and staircases conveying an impression of light and airiness painfully lacking in the older college of that ancient seat of learning, the University of Oxford. 

At the time of the interview the building had only been open for a short while and all the fixtures and fitting were brand new.  The lightness of the oak is commented upon in several reports and it is difficult today to imagine the Chapel and Library ceilings, plus the bookcases in the Library and panelling in the Chapel being a lighter natural colour.   

The article goes on to single out the Library as being ‘the pleasantest part of the College’.  

Imagine a private library on a large scale, one long room with projecting bay and oriel windows, light oak floor and ceiling, and oaken bookcases projecting from the sides toward the middle of the room and forming alcoves, which, fitted up with tables and chairs, look the very places to induce a flow of thought and to enable the student reader to improve the shining hours to the utmost.  

The room with its air of comfort, not to say luxury, and yet, with the indefinable something in the atmosphere that characterises a real library – not a mere store-house for books – accords well with the up-to-date character of the rest of the building... 

It must be remembered that the building had no stained glass at this point (the first coloured window was installed in 1895) and so all the glazing was clear.  The clear glass along with the electric lights in the rooms, plus new furniture from Lambs of Manchester, unmarked floors and walls must have created a sense of modernity and freshness for those visiting in those early years.   

We are very fortunate that many of the original fixtures and fittings remain in place.  The panelling in the Chapel, Library bookcases and oak floors have darkened through age but they remain authentic to the vision of the building when it was conceived and built.  The Lamb furniture remains in use and the door handles are original as are the mosaic floor and bosses on the ceiling in the entrance.  HMC now has occupied our present site for more than 130 years, adapting and constructing new buildings to meet our needs as we’ve grown.  We are no longer ‘painfully new’ and are part of the rich University landscape of colleges built throughout the ages.

_{One of Worthington's original hand drawn plans for the Chapel.  We have a full set of the plans for the building and a detailed specification for the material to be used.}