Hughes Hall, Cambridge

Helping orphans the way you would do it

Hughes Hall is the oldest graduate College in Cambridge University. It was originally founded in 1895 as the Cambridge Training College (CTC) for women and the principal was Miss Elizabeth Phillips Hughes. In 1885 it started with fourteen students in a small house in Newnham called Croft Cottage. By 1895 the College moved to its present site, which was designed by the Cambridge architect William Fawcett. Expanding slowly over the next 40 years, the college finally became part of the University in 1949 and was renamed Hughes Hall, after its first, inspirational principal.

The College's first male students arrived in 1973, and students began to arrive to study a wider range of affiliated post-graduate degrees. Student numbers have gradually risen over the eighties and nineties, with over 350 students, now including mature undergraduate students, studying a wide range of subjects.