Colleges of Durham University

The University is collegiate in structure. There are four different sorts of college: Maintained Colleges and Societies, Recognised Colleges, Licensed Halls of Residence, and Affiliated Colleges.

• Maintained Colleges are governed directly by, and are financially dependent on, the University. Their principals and staff are appointed by University Council. The maintained colleges are overseen by the Deputy Warden, who is also a member of the University Executive Committee.
• Recognised Colleges (St John's and St Chad's) are 'recognised' as colleges of the University, but they are actually incorporated as separate institutions. They are in effect accredited, being governed, financed and managed independently of the University and being educational charities in their own right. However, as a condition of their ongoing recognition by the University, the University's Council must approve the appointment of their principals and be notified of changes to their constitutions.[2]
• Licensed Halls of Residences are, unlike Recognised Colleges, not recognised as colleges of the University, and their principals are only ex officio members of Senate if the hall has 25 or more matriculated students in residence. Under statute 14, Council may recognise any college within County Durham as a licensed hall of residence; at the moment only Ushaw College is recognised in this statute, Neville's Cross College (now merged into New College Durham) was a licensed hall from 1924 to 1977.[3] The regulations as to the approval of principals and changes to their constitutions apply to licensed halls in the same way as to recognised colleges.

St John's College, one of the two Recognised Colleges

• Affiliated Colleges are treated under statute 39, rather than statutes 14 & 15 like the other colleges. This states that Council may, on the recommendation of Senate, recognised any college as an affiliated college. There are currently no affiliated colleges. Previous affiliated colleges have included Codrington College in Barbados, Fourah Bay College in Sierra Leone (now part of the University of Sierra Leone), and Sunderland Technical College (now the University of Sunderland).[4] Affiliated colleges are not generally considered part of the collegiate structure of the University.

The University validates degrees at other colleges not recognised under any of the above categories. Current arrangements include the validation of the Church of England's Common Award at a number of theological colleges.[5] The Royal Academy of Dance also used to teach courses leading to degrees validated by Durham.

St Mary's College, the oldest of the hill colleges

Most colleges can be classified into two groups: Bailey colleges, located on Durham's peninsula around Durham Cathedral, and Hill colleges on Elvet Hill on the other side of the river.[6]

The five Bailey colleges are located in historic buildings on The Bailey, the peninsula around the castle and cathedral that forms the historic centre of Durham. They include most of the older colleges of the university.

The Hill colleges are located in purpose-built buildings on Elvet Hill to the south of the city, close to the Mountjoy site which houses most of the university's departments and central facilities. The first hill college was St Mary's, which moved in 1952 from the Bailey. All new colleges founded in Durham since then have been on Elvet Hill, and as of 2020 houses it eight colleges, with two more under construction.

Two colleges do not fit into this grouping: the College of St Hild and St Bede, formed in 1975 as a merger of two Victorian teacher training colleges, is located along with the Education Department on Gilesgate, on the opposite side of Durham from Elvet Hill.[6] Ustinov College, the university's only postgraduate-only college, is based at Sheraton Park on the same side of the city as Elvet Hill but further from the city centre, which was formerly the home of Neville's Cross College.[7]

Some colleges also have accommodation in other parts of the city, most notably St Cuthbert's Society, which has its headquarters on the Bailey but its largest accommodation blocks at the end of Old Elvet, across the river from St Hild and St Bede.

South (left) and John Snow (right) colleges on Mount Oswald

The university announced in 2017 its intention to build four to six new colleges by 2027.[8][9]

The first of these, South College, opened in 2020 on the Mount Oswald site, alongside a new home for John Snow College which relocated from Queen's Campus in 2018.[10][11][12]

In 2023, it was announced that the university planned to work with the owners of Rushford Court private hall, formerly County Hospital, to equip the site with college facilities, to serve as a temporary home for College of St Hild and St Bede during renovation of its own site, then to become the university's eighteenth college once Hild Bede returned to its own buildings.[13][14]

The colleges built on Elvet Hill each have their own distinctive architecture. The first college built in the area, St Mary's in 1952, was designed by Vincent Harris and has been described as both neo-Georgian and domestic-classical. It set a "colleges-in-a-green-landscape" tone that was followed by the other hill colleges, even while their architectural styles varied widely.[15][16] The next, Grey College (1959) was designed by T. Worthington of Thomas Worthington and Sons. It was built of brick in a domestic Georgian style, and has been called the most architecturally disappointing of the post-war colleges, looking like "a mature suburban housing estate".[16][17] After this, the remainder of the post-war colleges were built in a variety of modernist styles. The architect for the concrete St Aidan's College was Sir Basil Spence; the original design called for the brutalist dining hall to be balanced by a chapel, but this was never built.[16][18] Van Mildert College by Middleton, Fletcher and Partners follows a "conventional modern idiom" with a formal layout around the lake, serrated blocks and cloistered walks.[16][17] Collingwood College was designed in a functionalist style in brown brick by Sir Richard Sheppard, and shows similarities to his more famous work at Churchill College, Cambridge, but with less ambition and expense.[16][17][19] Another, very different, example of functionalist architecture is found at Trevelyan College, where its hexagonal forms, designed by Stillman and Eastwick-Field, won a Civic Trust Award in 1968.[16][17][19]

Bishop Cosin's Hall on Palace Green was opened as the university's third college in 1851. However, a collapse in student numbers in the late 1850s and 1860s meant the university was unable to sustain three colleges at the time, and it was merged into University College in 1864.[27] At the close of the 19th century it became a common room for St. Cuthbert's Society.[28] The building (which had also been the original home of University College before it moved into the castle) is still owned by the university, and was used by University College until 2006, after which it became the home of the Institute of Advanced Study in January 2007.[29]

Former buildings of Neville's Cross College, now part of Ustinov College

Neville's Cross College was opened in 1921. It was primarily a teacher-training college, but from 1924 it was also a licensed hall of the University and admitted students to read for both undergraduate courses and postgraduate degrees.

The college merged with Durham Technical College in 1977 to form New College Durham, whereupon it ceased to be associated with the University.[3] The former site of the college in Sheraton Park became home to the University's Ustinov College in 2017.[30][31]

Arms of Ushaw College

Ushaw College was a Catholic seminary located in Ushaw Moor, a village to the west of Durham. It was opened in 1808 by scholars who had fled from Douai, France, when English College was forced to close during the French Revolution. It affiliated with Durham as 'Licensed Hall' in 1968, though it retained its role primarily as a seminary. It shut as a seminary in 2011 due to a declining number of vocations in the Catholic Church, but remains recognised as a licensed hall in the University's statutes. Part of the college is now used by Durham Business School,[32] and it is also used for conferences and lectures by the Department of Theology and Religion.[33][34]

Armstrong College Shield

In 1852, the School of Medicine and Surgery (founded in 1834) in Newcastle upon Tyne was absorbed into the University of Durham as the College of Medicine, allowing students to study for the Licence in Medicine in Durham, after which students could practise Medicine and take the degrees of Bachelor and Doctor in Medicine.[35] At the same time, Neville Hall was opened in Newcastle 'for the reception of Students in Medicine'.[36] The Hall closed at the end of the academic year in 1855/56. In 1871, the College of Medicine was joined by the College of Physical Science, later renamed Armstrong College.[37]

College of Medicine Shield

Relations between the two campuses were often strained. They became two autonomous parts of the same university, with the Newcastle colleges merging to become King's College in 1937.[35] In 1947 a proposal to rename the university as the "University of Durham and Newcastle" was approved by all the governing bodies, but was defeated at convocation by 135 votes to 129 in the spring of 1952.[38][39] This defeat led to King's College eventually leaving the university, to create the new University of Newcastle upon Tyne in 1963.[37]

Development of the Newcastle Colleges of Durham University
	School of Medicine and Surgery 1834	Newcastle upon Tyne College of Medicine, in connection with the University of Durham 1852	Durham University College of Medicine 1870	King's College 1937 - 1963
	College of Physical Science 1871	Durham College of Science 1883	Armstrong College 1904

• 1937-1951 Lord Eustace Percy[48]
• 1951-1963 Charles Bosanquet (first Vice-Chancellor of Newcastle University)[48]

Sunderland Technical College was affiliated to Durham from 1930 to 1963 in the Faculty of Applied Science, and was thus associated with the Newcastle division of the University. When the Newcastle division became Newcastle University in 1963, Sunderland's affiliation with Durham ended. In 1969 the Technical College merged with Sunderland Teacher Training College and the Sunderland School of Art to form Sunderland Polytechnic (now the University of Sunderland).[49][50]

Originally established in 1992 as the Joint University College On Teesside (JUCOT), a limited company established as a joint venture between Durham and the University of Teesside operating under the name of University College Stockton, this became a teaching and residential college of Durham in 1994 as University College Stockton (UCS), the JUCOT company being wound up. In 1998 the teaching and residential aspects were separated, with teaching becoming the responsibility of the University of Durham, Stockton Campus. In 2001 UCS was replaced by two new colleges, Stephenson and John Snow.[51][52]

• 1992 – 1994 Robert Parfitt
• 1994 – 2001 John Hayward