Living and learning

A completely new type of student

UCL provided a stimulating environment for a completely new type of university student in the early-to-mid-nineteenth century. Students in London came from far more modest homes than their peers at the universities of Oxford or Cambridge and represented all religious backgrounds, including Jews, Roman Catholics, Quakers, Methodists, Baptists and others who were barred from the ancient universities. From the start UCL attracted international students, and less than twenty years after opening was celebrating the arrival of the first Indian students.

"UCL provided a stimulating environment for a completely new type of university student."

I have been researching who these first students were – where they lived, what they ate and drank, where they studied and socialised, what they wore, and where they shopped. Under only limited supervision from the university, UCL students had unparalleled opportunities to invent their own traditions. The exhibition showcases UCL’s rich collections of archive material and objects covering student life, including new acquisitions of clothing, memorabilia and scrapbooks that were loaned or donated by alumni. I wanted to spotlight individual stories while also exploring the collective activities of students over time – so each case includes record cards or images of real students drawn from across two centuries.

Making a home

One case called Making a home features photographs of student bedrooms and communal spaces in halls of residence across four different decades: the 1880s, 1960s, 1990s and 2020s.

Images of student residences can provide a fascinating insight into changing student priorities, gender relations on campus as well as trends in interior design. The décor shown in photographs of College Hall, the first hall of residence for women opened in 1882, projects a respectable, middle-class femininity designed to reassure those uncertain about the novelty of women’s higher education. The "prettily furnished" rooms of College Hall were even featured in contemporary newspapers such as The Graphic.

"Images of student residences can provide a fascinating insight into changing student priorities."

The mid-century rooms we feature appear sparse and even austere when compared to either the earlier or later images. The early 1990s bedrooms reflect the changing technology available to students such as hi-fi systems and portable televisions as well as highlight the significance of pop culture artefacts such as the stuffed Gremlin toy or troll doll. Note that it was considered too intimate in the 1880s to show a student’s bed, but the more recent students were happy to be photographed sitting or lying on theirs.

To complement historic images in UCL’s archives, I commissioned a new photoshoot of first-year undergraduate rooms in summer 2023. We chose to revisit Astor College and Campbell House, as these were the residences that we had earlier photographs of. College Hall still exists as a mixed, inter-collegiate hall of the University of London but is no longer in its original Byng Place building.

While we had advertised the opportunity to students by email ahead of time, we didn’t have many responses, so I simply turned up with UCL photographer Mary Hinkley on a warm day in June 2023 and began knocking on students’ doors!  Fortunately, we found several students willing to tolerate this strange professor asking to take photographs of them in their rooms (the gift voucher as a thank you might have helped with this).

Coincidently, one student we met in Astor College, Iona Coles, had actually studied my module on the history of UCL and so it was fun to reconnect and for her to become part of UCL’s archive. By the 2020s, mobile phones and laptops are the necessary learning tools of the student, though books, plants, pictures and cuddly toys are still used to personalise their space. The images of the shared kitchens with pizza boxes and vodka bottles are a sharp contrast to the formal dining rooms of previous generations.

"Having the photograph of my first-year student room on display as part of the exhibition makes me feel more connected and really part of UCL. It’s been fun to take my friends to see it when they come to visit me in London. I also like the idea that the image will go into the UCL archive along with pictures of student rooms from different periods, and could be studied by people in a hundred years, when UCL is celebrating its tricentenary! "

- Iona Coles, a second-year BA Education Studies Student, whose photograph features in the exhibition.