Colleges of Durham University
The Colleges of Durham University are residential colleges that are the primary source of accommodation and support services for undergraduates and postgraduates at Durham University, as well as providing a focus for social, cultural and sporting life for their members, and offering bursaries and scholarships to students.
The colleges dominate the residential, social, sporting, and pastoral functions within the university, and there is heavy student involvement in their operation.
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.
[13][14] In May 2024, the university also announced the building of Durham's 19th college scheduled to start in 2025 neighbouring Hild Bede.
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 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".
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.
[17][19] 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.
[17][18][20] 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.
South College for instance, does not have the legal rights to bear arms and therefore recognised its trademark as a badge.
Two of these have become completely defunct; others have ended their association with the university, or left to become independent institutions of their own.
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.
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 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,[37] and it is also used for conferences and lectures by the Department of Theology and Religion.
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.
They replaced the original University College Stockton and were located on the Queen's Campus at Stockton-on-Tees.
[61] Jesus College and Coverdale Hall are the settings for the events in Angels and Men, Durham alumna Catherine Fox's first novel (published by Hamish Hamilton in 1996).
The location is nowhere stated explicitly, but it is obvious to anyone familiar with the city and the university that it takes place in Durham; Jesus and Coverdale are modelled (very closely) on St John's College and Cranmer Hall.
