Introduction to the Archive
The archive reflects the history of the College, in that it is linked to the history of women’s higher education in Oxford. The collections cover several organisations connected to what is now St Anne’s College.
St Anne’s College was originally known as the Society of Oxford Home-Students. It was formed in 1879 as part of the Association for Promoting the Higher Education of Women in Oxford (AEW), the organisation that arranged the lectures and tutorials for the first women students in the University.
When the first two colleges for women (Somerville Hall and Lady Margaret Hall) opened, some women preferred to not be affiliated with a college and lived with relations or in lodgings around the city. This group eventually became the Society of Oxford Home-Students (first officially using the name in 1890) with the AEW as its parent body.
In 1910, when the women’s colleges were formally acknowledged by the University, a Delegacy for Women Students was formed. This took over most of the duties of the AEW, including overseeing the Home-Students.
The AEW and the Delegacy for Women Students were both dissolved in 1920, after women became full members of the University, enabling them to matriculate and obtain degrees. From that point the governance of the Home-Students was administered by a group of ‘Delegates of Home-Students’, consisting of the Society’s tutors and University officials and representatives.
In 1942, the Home-Students changed their name to St Anne's Society and in 1952 the Society received its Royal Charter to become St Anne’s College. The new College was governed by a Council composed of a mixture of College and external members. In 1959, the five women’s colleges acquired full collegiate status to become fully self-governing and the St Anne’s Council became a Governing Body.
The College gradually shifted to becoming fully residential by expanding its site on Woodstock Road. It became co-educational in 1979, its centenary year.
The papers from the above administrative bodies and other college departments are supplemented by collections deposited by fellows and alumnae to provide a record of the history of the College.
The most notable contributor to the archive was Ruth Florence Butler, a Home-Student from 1901-1904 who later served as Modern History Tutor, Vice-Principal and Dean of Degrees.
She wrote the first published college histories and formally established the archive in 1952, when she created the original catalogue records and paid for a cupboard in which the material could be housed. Alongside the college records she included personal papers of two notable contributors to women’s education who also were closely connected to the Home-Students and St Anne’s: Bertha Johnson and Annie Rogers.
More information on the history of the College can be found at:
https://www.st-annes.ox.ac.uk/this-is-st-annes/history/
and in the following two publications:
- Ruth Florence Butler and M H Prichard, Saint Anne's College: A History (Oxford, Privately Published, 1957), consisting of two volumes previously published separately: The Society of Oxford Home-Students: Retrospects and Recollections (1930) and A History of St Anne’s Society: formerly the Society of Oxford Home-Students (1949).
- Marjorie Reeves, St Anne's College, Oxford: An Informal History (Oxford: St Anne's College, 1979)
Abbreviations used throughout the catalogue:
AEW: Association for Promoting the Higher Education of Women in Oxford
SOHS: Society of Oxford Home-Students