My first year at Fourah Bay College 1944/45 was spent in Mabang, the historic building at Cline Town having been commandeered in support of the British war effort, as were the buildings of almost all the secondary schools. The College was still a small institution whose influence throughout West Africa and beyond was out of all proportion to its size. Only 787 students had signed the register before me since Samuel Ajayi Crowther in 1827; he was Yoruba and was to become the first African bishop in the Anglican Church. Fifteen freshmen in 1944 – Sierra Leoneans, Nigerians and Ghanaians – compared more than favourably with only three the previous year. The very existence of the college was threatened by the minority recommendations of the Elliott Commission report on Higher Education in West Africa, which the British Secretary of State for the Colonies accepted, and which recommended the closure of university work in Sierra Leone. Fourah Bay was saved only by the resolute resistance of the citizens to this outrage. The monastic institution – the few female students had withdrawn when the college had been transferred from Freetown to the spartan conditions of Mabang – had to struggle with the demands of the Durham University Bachelor's Degrees without running water, electricity, telephone, shops, fresh food and other amenities of city life.