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Building on the Backs: Basil Spence, Queens’ College Cambridge and University Architecture at Mid-Century

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 April 2016

Louise Campbell
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Extract

Higher Education in Britain expanded dramatically during the 1950s and 1960s. The trigger for growth was the Barlow Report of 1946, which recommended an immediate doubling of the number of science students and an increase in the total number of student places, of which there had been c. 50,000 in 1939, to 70,000 by 1950 and 90,000 by 1955. The 1963 Robbins Report continued and accelerated this expansionist policy, proposing that half a million student places be created by 1980. In the event, although funding was less generous than Barlow had recommended, the numbers achieved were far greater, and 85,000 students were in Higher Education by 1950. The impetus for this growth, which included the foundation of seven new universities (the so-called ‘Shakespearean Seven’) and the enlargement of existing institutions, stemmed from an ambitious vision of the role of universities after the Second World War. Higher Education, and particularly scientific training, was seen as one way to maintain Britain’s position on the world stage. Equally important was the principle of widening access, and a concern to broaden the social base of university education found expression in a range of new approaches to design. Within this context, the universities of Oxford and Cambridge also witnessed significant expansion, but in a very particular way and with distinctive results on account of these universities’ collegiate structure. As elsewhere, buildings at Oxbridge for teaching and research were dependent on finance from the University Grants Committee, but the semi-autonomous colleges could draw on their own (sometimes considerable) resources when it came to building. Furthermore, college dons could exercise significantly more influence over the choice of architect than was possible elsewhere. The colleges of Oxford and Cambridge therefore provided an important environment in which new architectural ideas could be explored. An early contribution to the debate was made by the Erasmus Building, a residential block at Queens’ College, Cambridge, designed by Basil Spence in 1958 (Fig. 1). Although the history of Spence’s design is inextricably bound up with its Cambridge context, as an attempt to reformulate the collegiate ideal it also offers a foretaste of the debates that shaped the new universities in the decade that followed.

Type
Research Article
Information
Architectural History , Volume 54 , 2011 , pp. 383 - 405
Copyright
Copyright © Society of Architectural Historians of Great Britain 2011

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References

Notes

1 The Barlow Report was published as Scientific Manpower: Report of a Committee Appointed by the Lord President of the Council (London, 1946)Google Scholar. For student numbers, see Vernon, Keith, ‘The Health and Welfare of University Students in Britain, 1920–1939’, History of Education, 37/2 (2008), pp. 227–52;CrossRefGoogle Scholar Dyhouse, Carol, ‘Going to University: Funding, Costs, Benefits’, at www.historyandpolicy.org/papers/policy-paper-61.html (accessed on 2 April 2011)Google Scholar.

2 See Stewart, W. A. C., Higher Education in Post-War Britain (Basingstoke, 1989)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

3 Muthesius, Stefan, The Post-War University: Utopianist Campus and College (New Haven and London, 2000), p. 103 Google Scholar. The term ‘Shakespearean Seven’ was apparently invented by Sir Edward Boyle.

4 See Taylor, Nicholas, Cambridge New Architecture (Saffron Walden, 1965), pp. 8 Google Scholar,15–16.

5 Taylor, Cambridge New Architecture, pp. 15–16.

6 Colvin, Howard, Unbuilt Oxford (New Haven and London, 1983), pp. 166–77 Google Scholar.

7 Colvin, Unbuilt Oxford, pp. 178–83. For a good survey of post-war Oxford architecture, see Tyack, Geoffrey, Modern Architecture in an Oxford College: St John’s College, 1945-2005 (Oxford, 2005), pp. 9–10 Google Scholar and 19–21.

8 Pembroke College commissioned Marshall Sisson’s neo-Georgian Orchard Building in 1957–58; Trinity abandoned designs by Powell and Moya and commissioned the more conventional Angel Court from H. C. Husband in 1957–59; King’s commissioned William Holford to design a traditionalist extension to Bodley’s Court on a site adjoining the plot at Queens’ in 1954–55. See Taylor, Cambridge New Architecture, pp. 21, 25,31.

9 Goldie, Mark, Corbusier Comes to Cambridge: Post-War Architecture and the Competition to Build Churchill College (Cambridge, 2007)Google Scholar provides a detailed account of the competition and the various designs for it.

10 Goldie, Churchill, pp. 9 and 11.

11 See Taylor, Cambridge New Architecture, p. 29.

12 Ibid.

13 For criticism of the architecture of the redbricks, see Whyte, William, ‘Redbrick’s unlovely quadrangles’: Reinterpreting the Architecture of the Civic Universities’, History of Universities, 21 (2006), pp. 151–77 Google Scholar.

14 Whyte, William, ‘The Modernist Moment at the University of Leeds, 1957–77’, Historical Journal, 51/1 (2008), pp. 169–93 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

15 Goldie, Churchill, p. 11, and Alan Powers, ‘“Still clutching the inviolable shade”: Traditional Architecture and its Enemies in the Early Post-War Period’, in Modern Architecture in the 1950s, ed. Richardson, Kenneth (Kingston, 1996)Google Scholar.

16 See Goldie, Churchill, and Whyte, ‘Modernist Moment’ for the decisive influence of Leslie Martin. See also Powell, Kenneth, Powell & Moya (London, 2009), pp. 72–75 Google Scholar for individuals who were instrumental in securing college commissions for Powell and Moya. Schemes at Oxford driven by individuals include the Beehive building at St John’s, where Howard Colvin was behind the commission to the Architects’ Co-Partnership, and Brasenose College, where Norman Leyland was apparently behind the choice of Powell & Moya (see Powell, Powell and Moya, p. 57). At Cambridge, Andor Gomme was influential in the commission to Leslie Martin and St John Wilson for Harvey Court, Caius College.

17 Muthesius, Post-War University, p. 114.

18 Twigg, John, History of Queens’ College, Cambridge 1448–1986 (Woodbridge, 1987), p. 373 Google Scholar. The Fisher Building, a curved range designed by G. C. Drinkwater, opened in 1936 and intended to provide for the College’s needs in the twentieth century, proved insufficient in the post-war years. Pevsner, Nikolaus described it as ‘looking like exactly like a friendly block of flats at, say, Pinner’, The Buildings of England: Cambridgeshire (Harmondsworth, 1969), p. 139 Google Scholar.

19 Cambridge, Queens’ College, Governing Body Minutes, November 1955.

20 ‘The Fabric’, Queens’ College Magazine 1959-60 (March 1961), p. 4.

21 G. Perry and J. Taylor, Varsity, 19 November 1956.

22 ‘Basil Spence and Queens College Cambridge’, Prefabrication, pp. 150–57 (p. 151); letter in Cambridge Review, 20 October 1956, p. 515.

23 Information from Alan Powers.

24 The College’s flagging commitment to Dykes Bower is conveyed by the Librarian, Leonard Potts, writing to an alumnus on 30 July 1956: ‘we have employed an architect, but only so far as to satisfy ourselves that what we want can be done [...] the site is an important one, on the Backs, and we must have enough for good architecture, tho’ not for extravagance’. Cambridge, Queens’ College, Letter from L. Potts to R. H. C. Robins, cited courtesy of the Dean of Chapel, Queens’ College.

25 Cambridge, Queens’ College, College Meeting minutes, 9 October 1956 and 31 May 1957 (subsequently cited as CM). According to Prefabrication, Dykes Bower said that he had made three different designs, and had decided not to proceed with the model design before the episode. The neo-Wren design is apparently the only design of the three to survive.

26 The full list comprised Michael Farey, Gollins Melville Ward, Maxwell Fry, Henry Goddard , Easton & Robertson, William Holford, Myles Wright, Donald McMorran, Brian O’Rorke, David Roberts, and Basil Spence.

27 See Taylor, Cambridge New Architecture.

28 Spence also had commissions for individual buildings at the universities of Glasgow, Edinburgh, Durham/Newcastle, Exeter and Liverpool. See Campbell, Louise, Glendinning, Miles and Thomas, Jane , eds, Sir Basil Spence, Buildings and Projects (RIBA, forthcoming, 2011)Google Scholar, chs 7 and 10.

29 Gardner-Medwin, Robert, ‘The Decline of Architecture’, Higher Education Quarterly, 10 / 2 (February 1956), p. 136 Google Scholar.

30 ‘The Big and the Ugly’, Cambridge Review, 13 October 1956, pp. 1-2. Spence’s own perspective of the Southampton University group was also illustrated in Architectural Review, 122 (October 1957), p. 234 as an example of a brave new type of university architecture.

31 Cambridge, Queens’ College, ‘Perspectives and Illustrations of Architects Work’, April 1957. There is very little documentation at Queens’ regarding the decision-making process over the new residence; some of the correspondence cited in Twigg’s history of the college (including the document referenced at n. 68, below) seems to have disappeared.

32 This was Chamberlain Hall on Southampton’s Glen Eyre campus, designed in 1956 and built in 1958–60. The image sent to Queens’ was probably the high-level perspective drawing showing inner courtyards exhibited at the Royal Academy in May 1956, reproduced in the Architects’ Journal, 123 (10 May 1956), p. 483. See also Cambridge, Queens’ College, CM minutes, 13 May 1957.

33 Cambridge, Queens’ College, Draft Instructions to Architect Proposed by Building Committee, 7 June 1957. Half the cost was to come from college funds and half from graduate donations.

34 Spence’s appointments diary records a visit to Cambridge on 31 May, returning in November for a week. Edinburgh, Royal Commission on the Ancient and Historical Monuments of Scotland, Spence archive, MS 2329/X/34. His remarks quoted in Prefabrication, Builder, Cambridge Review and his letter to Jordan (see n. 62 below) stress his response to the collegiate context. His first design is dated November 1957.

35 Twigg, History, p.373.

36 ‘Modern Building for the Backs’, Times Educational Supplement, 5 February 1958, p. 203.

37 Ibid.

38 See Stamp, Gavin, ‘Anti-Ugly Action’, Blueprint, 250 (January 2007), pp. 60–63 Google Scholar. They also targeted Louis de Soissons’ neo-Georgian Prudential Building in Cambridge.

39 For the statement distributed by the group outside the RIBA, see ‘Anti-Ugly Action’, Architects’ Journal, 130 (12 November 1959), p. 490.

40 For Spence’s Presidency, see Walford, Sarah Helen, ‘Architecture in Tension: an Examination of the Position of the Architect in the Private and Public Sectors, Focusing on the Training and Careers of Sir Basil Spence and Sir Donald Gibson’ (doctoral thesis, University of Warwick, 2009)Google Scholar, ch. 8.

41 ‘Basil Spence and Queens College Cambridge’, p. 150.

42 Edinburgh, RCAHMS, Spence archive, MS 2329/x / 19 / 5 / 52, letter to R. F. Jordan, 18 April 1958.

43 Rawle, Tim, Cambridge Architecture (London, 1985), p. 124 Google Scholar, and Prefabrication, 4 (February 1958), p. 151.

44 Letters to The Times, 4 February 1958.

45 Interview by author with Christopher Walker, 2009.

46 Campbell, Louise, Coventry Cathedral: Art and Architecture in Post-War Britain (Oxford, 1996), pp. 83–85 Google Scholar.

47 Cambridge Review, 8 February 1958, p. 319.

48 London, British Architectural Library, MUN/3/9, letter from Spence to Noel Musgrave, 8 September 1961.

49 Cambridge Review, 8 February 1958.

50 Cambridge Review, 15 February 1958, p. 343.

51 Ibid. Gomme wrote of ‘second-hand pattern-making’, ‘play-acting’.

52 In fact, plans, sections and elevations as well as perspective drawings were published in Prefabrication in February 1958.

53 Cambridge, Queens’ College, CM minutes, 14 February 1958.

54 Cambridge, Queens’ College, copy of ‘The College Appeal’ (1958), p. 4.

55 See ‘Building on the Backs’, Architects’ Journal, 128 (13 February 1958).

56 Cambridge, Queens’ College, CM minutes, 14 March 1958.

57 See drawings of Queens’ College at Edinburgh, RCAHMS, Spence archive, for example DP 012768.

58 It provided forty-three undergraduate rooms and two Fellows’ sets.

59 Twigg, History, p. 375.

60 Edinburgh, RCAHMS, SPE ENG / 37 / 2 / 2 / 2, (Fig. 8).

61 Twigg, History, p. 375. A small model preserved at Queens’ College, its box labelled ‘Discarded model for new building rejected about October 58’, is apparently that of June 1958. See also CM minutes, 25 July 1958.

62 Undated letter quoted by Twigg, History, p.375.

63 Cambridge, Queens’ College, CM minutes, 24 October 1958.

64 ‘Basil Spence and Queens College Cambridge’, p. 150.

65 Edinburgh, RCAHMS, Spence archive, MS 2329/ x / 19 / 5 / 52, letter to R. F. Jordan, 18 April 1958.

66 Ibid.

67 Further small modifications were made in 1959 in order to cut costs.

68 JB [Junior Bursar] - Erasmus file, quoted by Twigg, History, pp. 402–03.

69 David Rock recalls being told that the old wall had collapsed during the course of building work. Interview by author, August 2009.

70 According to CM minutes of 11 February 1959, ‘[...] the GB [Governing Body] wished the wall under the arches to be removed’ to allow views through to the Bowling Green, the garden and the Backs.

71 ‘Undergraduate Rooms: Queens College Cambridge. Architects: Basil Spence and Partners’, Architectural Review, 130 (July 1961), p. 52.

72 ‘New Buildings at Cambridge Colleges’, House & Garden, 17, no. 6: 160 (June 1962), pp. 54–57 (p. 54).

73 See ‘The Work of Richard Sheppard and Partners’, Architectural Design, 27 (July 1957), pp. 225-62 (p. 241). The block was demolished in 2006.

74 The College’s brief stated that ‘the accommodation arrangements may be based on corridors, but should preserve the characteristic intimacy of Cambridge college life’. Cambridge, Queens’ College, ‘Draft Instructions to Architect Proposed by the Building Committee’, 7 June 1957.

75 ‘Both the architects and the Dons felt that [the staircases] should be more than interconnecting units between the floors and by making both the stairs and the landings wide there is room for as much as five people to congregate without restricting the circulation flow. The feature stems from the premise that “on staircases people get to know each other better.’” See ‘Basil Spence and Queens College Cambridge’, p. 153.

76 ‘The Fabric’, QCM, p. 5.

77 ‘New Buildings’, p. 56.

78 Edinburgh, RCAHMS, Spence archive, 2329/ENG / 37 / 1 / 1, ‘Queens College Cambridge’.

79 ‘New Buildings’, p. 56.

80 Twigg, History, p. 402.

81 Cambridge, Queens’ College, drawing S12, dated 15 January 1959. Rock, although only working part-time for Spence from May 1958, continued to be closely involved in aspects of the design until 1959 when Michael Ogden took over from him as job architect.

82 The Governing Body’s wishes are recorded in CM minutes, 2 October 1959. ‘Oaks’ functioned as a signal of a student’s availability to visitors. If both doors were closed, it meant ‘do not disturb’. If the outer one was open, the occupant was ‘sporting his oak’ and visitors were welcome. On 29 January 1960 they were cancelled because they required too much opening space. Information from Michael Ogden, October 2008.

83 ‘The Fabric’, p. 4; also Cambridge, Queens’ College, elevation drawing signed ‘Basil Spence’ and dated October 1960.

84 Varsity, June 1961.

85 Goldie, Churchill, p. 9. The non-architect judges were Sir John Cockcroft and Noel Annan.

86 Ibid., p. 4. Although the winning design for Churchill by Richard Sheppard Robson was based on a series of quadrangles, other competitors proposed a wide range of layouts.

87 Taylor, Cambridge New Architecture, p. 29.

88 Spence, Basil, ‘Building a New University’, in The Idea of a New University: an Experiment in Sussex, ed. Daiches, David (London, 1964), pp. 201–95 Google Scholar (p. 202).

89 See ‘ Influences of Greek and Roman Architecture in the Proposed Sussex University’, Architect & Building News, 217 (13 April 1960), pp. 469-73 Google Scholar.

90 Edinburgh, RCAHMS, Spence archive, ENG/ 52 / 2 / 102, ‘University College of Sussex’.

91 Mary Scrutton quoted in Lionel Brett, ‘ Universities 2: Today’, Architectural Review, 122 (October 1957), pp. 240–50 Google Scholar (p. 240), and in Whyte, ‘Redbrick’s Unlovely Quadrangles’, p. 152.

92 Finch, Ian, ‘Academic Downs’, Guardian, 20 March 1964, p. 12 Google Scholar.

93 Harwood, Elain, England: a Guide to Post-War Listed Buildings (London, 2003), p. 282 Google Scholar.

94 Rod Kedward, ‘The Early Years at Sussex’, paper at conference on ‘Building the New Universities’, University of Sussex, April 2002.

95 Briggs, Asa, ‘Drawing a New Map of Learning’, in The Idea of a New University: an Experiment in Sussex, ed. Daiches, David (London, 1964), pp. 60–80 Google Scholar.

96 Kedward, ‘The Early Years’.

97 Mark Crinson has suggested that Stirling and Gowan’s layout for the Churchill College competition constituted a ‘veiled satire’, projecting ‘a more light-hearted, perhaps wilder vision of undergraduate life than the “boring old Cambridge sets’”. See Crinson, Mark, ‘Picturesque and Intransigent: “Creative Tension” and Collaboration in the Early House Projects of Stirling and Gowan’, Architectural History, 50 (2007), pp. 267–95 Google Scholar (pp. 286-87).