THE FIRST "FRIEND"

Evening Post, Volume CXXVI, Issue 74, 24 September 1938, Page 23

THE FIRST "FRIEND"

QUEEN MARY ENROLLED

CEREMONY AT CAMBRIDGE

(By Air Mail, from "The Post's" London

Representative.)

LONDON, August 15,

j_ The, Guilds of Friends look after c funds required for the preservation of tt some of England's cathedrals. The [" friends of Newriham College will make s it their chief interest to collect the D £46,000 still needed for new build5 > ings. c Queen Mary was enrolled as the first c member of the Frienas of Newnham c College when she visited Cambridge } f to open the first block of the new buildings at Newnham. The full cost r of the projected additions to the col--0 lege will be £ 100,000, towards which £54,000 has been collected. J" Miss J. P. Strachey, principal of Newnham, in welcoming Queen Mary, 1 spoke of- her warm interest in the • building scheme and her very generous • donation to the fund, adding: "We are proud to think that while in the past • many Cambridge colleges have received munificent benefactions from, the Kings and Queens of England, your Majesty is the first English Queen who has thus befriended a Cambridge women's college." The amount already collected came through the efforts of past and present ( students, who had worked' with the [ utmost devotion, and the gsnerosity of > other friends. A considerable' past ' of the building scheme had now been ■ j carried out—alterations in three of : i the other buildings and the construeMtion of the first new block. The col--11 lege was deeply grateiul to its archij tects, Miss Elisabeth Scott, Mr. Shep- ) herd, and Mr. Breakwell, for their j skill, patience, and ingenuity, and for • i their tact and taste in the design and 1 j decoration of the new building. Newn- • ham students were to be found all over the world, in the professions, in public work, as daughters, wives, 1 and mothers. Their contribution to the welfare of ; humanity was not a negligible one. 1 Queen Mary then named the Fawcett building, and declared it open. An interesting visitor was Mrs. Al- ' fred Marshall, who had been one of the ■ first five resident students in the small house in Regent Street, Cambridge, when within two years of starting advanced courses for women students the pioneers of the movement realised that some student home must be provided. Another was Miss Philippa Fawcett, the woman who brought such distinction to Newnham w 1890 when she took her mathematical tripos and >t was announced that she was above the Senior Wrangler. PURSE PRESENTATIONS. More than 40 purses, presented in aid of the building fund, were received by Queen Mary. Among the donors' representatives who passed in procession before her was the blind student, Miss Ruth Hitchcock, who had taken first classes in both parts of the Theological Tripos, the second part in June this year. She presented a purse on behalf of the present students of Newnham. . Two six-year-old ' twins, Joanna and Alison Cook, both dressed in blue, conveyed to Queen Mary the purse from Kimway School, Cambridge. One from the Richmond Group was handed over by Shirley Booth, aged three, who immediately afterwards shouted triumphantly, "I've done it, mummy!"—much to the amusement of everyone. The Fellows of the college were presented by the principal, and the vice-chancellor made a speech of thanks and asked Queen Mary to accept from the principal a souvenir of the occasion—an antique etui with gold fittings. Later, the architects, Miss Elisa-j beth Scott and Mr. J. C. Shepherd, the consulting engineers, and others cerned with the constructional work were presented. Miss Scott's name is well known in connection with the design of the Shakespeare Memorial Theatre at Stratford-on-Avon.