The two parties eventually split, and Talbot's group (the "Christ Church camp") founded Lady Margaret Hall, which opened its doors for students in 1879, the same year as Somerville did.

[18] She was admired by the founders of the college as a scholar, as well as for her religious and political views, including her conviction that women should have equality in terms of suffrage and access to education.

[19] Madeleine Shaw-Lefevre was chosen as the first principal because, though not a well-known academic at the time, her background was felt to reflect the college's political stance.

Somerville appointed Lilla Haigh as its first in-house tutor in 1882,[25] and by the end of the 1890s female students were permitted to attend lectures in almost all colleges.

[28] In Oxford legend it soon became known as the "bluestocking college", its excellent examination results refuting the widespread belief that women were incapable of high academic achievement.

Mo Moulton argued in their Agatha Award-winning book, The Mutual Admiration Society: How Dorothy L. Sayers and Her Oxford Circle Remade the World For Women,[38] that each one lived a life worthy of attention.

[53] Alumna Vera Brittain wrote about the impact of the war in Oxford and paid tribute to the work of the principal, Miss Penrose, in her memoir Testament of Youth.

[54] Since it was assumed that recruiting from a wider demographic would guarantee better students, there was pressure on single-sex colleges to change their policy to avoid falling down the rankings.

[55] All-female colleges, like Somerville, found it increasingly difficult to attract good applicants and fell to the bottom of the intercollegiate academic rankings during the period.

[70] The library dominates the north wing of the main quadrangle, having been designed to bring the college together, and is open 24 hours, with access to college-wide wifi, a group study room, and computing and printing facilities.

They were painted by Michael Noakes, Herbert James Gunn, George Percy Jacomb-Hood, William Coldstream, John Whittall, Francis Helps, Claude Rogers, Humphrey Ocean, Thomas Leveritt and Richard Twose.

[citation needed] Morley Horder was commissioned to build a quadrangle that would fill the space left by the demolished structures, using a loan of £12,000 from Christ Church.

[63] The coat of arms of Somerville and of co-founder John Percival, first Principal Madeleine Shaw-Lefevre and Helen Darbishire were carved by Edmund Ware inside the quadrangle.

[citation needed] Originally the East Quadrangle, it was opened in June 1934 by Lord Halifax as "a notable addition to buildings of varying styles" (varii generis aedificiia additamentum nobile) in the Creweian Oration during the Encaenia.

[77] The offices of the Global Ocean Commission, co-chaired by José María Figueres, Trevor Manuel and David Miliband, were housed in Darbishire as part of a partnership with Somerville in 2012–2016, when the organisation completed its work.

[78] Built largely with funds provided by alumna Emily Georgiana Kemp in 1935, Somerville Chapel reflects the non-denominational principle on which the college was founded in 1879.

Constructed in the same architectural style, with an exterior concrete frame standing away from the walls of the interior edifice, the two buildings overlie a podium of shops and an arcaded walkway in Little Clarendon Street.

[83] A four-storey building with five bays on each floor, Wolfson has impressive views of Walton Street from the rear and Somerville's main quadrangle from the front.

[86] The ground floor contains the Flora Anderson Hall (FAH) and Brittain-Williams Room, named after Vera Brittain and Shirley Williams, the college's most famous mother-daughter alumnae.

The buildings were opened in 1991 by Margaret Thatcher, Dorothy Hodgkin, Principal Catherine Hughes and College Visitor Baron Roy Jenkins.

[93] ROQ East and West flank the north side of Somerville and overlook the site of the university's new Blavatnik School of Government and Mathematical Institute.

Designed by Niall McLaughlin Architects, it includes en suite bathrooms, kitchens and accessible rooms on every floor and a new communal study area for graduate students.

[citation needed] There are nods to Somerville's long-standing links with India, the most notable being a large specimen of the Indian horse chestnut, Aesculus indica, planted on the Library lawn in 2019.

Features of interest include a narrow bed of low-growing Mediterranean plants in front of Wolfson in a modernist style, a varied selection of mature trees in the Library Quad, and large herbaceous borders containing emblematic Somerville thistles (Echinops).

However, this is evolving due to a change in garden management in late 2019, with aims of following more environmentally friendly growing principles and developing a more contemporary style.

There are clubs and teams in men's and women's football, rugby (with Corpus Christi), mixed lacrosse, cricket, swimming, hockey, netball, basketball, pool, water polo, tennis, squash, badminton, cycling, golf, rounders, and croquet.

[146] Somervillians include Prime Ministers Margaret Thatcher and Indira Gandhi, Nobel Prize winning scientist Dorothy Hodgkin, television personalities Esther Rantzen and Susie Dent, reformer Cornelia Sorabji, writers Marjorie Boulton, A. S. Byatt, Vera Brittain, Susan Cooper, Penelope Fitzgerald, Winifred Holtby, Nicole Krauss, Iris Murdoch and Dorothy L. Sayers, politicians Shirley Williams, Thérèse Coffey, Margaret Jay and Sam Gyimah, Princess Bamba Sutherland and her sister, biologist Marian Dawkins, philosophers G. E. M. Anscombe, Patricia Churchland, Philippa Foot and Mary Midgley, psychologist Anne Treisman, archaeologist Kathleen Kenyon, actress Moon Moon Sen, soprano Emma Kirkby, banker Baroness Vadera and numerous (women's rights) activists.

Somerville has educated at least 29 Dames, 18 heads of Oxford colleges, 11 life peers, 11 MPs, four Olympic rowers,[147] three of The 50 greatest British writers since 1945,[148] two prime ministers, two princesses, a queen consort, a first lady, and a Nobel laureate.

[149] Notable fellows of Somerville College (excluding alumni) include philosopher G. E. M. Anscombe, biochemist Louise Johnson, classical archaeologist Margarete Bieber, Egyptologist Käthe Bosse-Griffiths, classicists Edith Hall and Lotte Labowsky, author Alan Hollinghurst, astronomer Chris Lintott, International Federation of University Women founder Rose Sidgwick, botanist Timothy Walker and philologist Anna Morpurgo Davies.

[151] The two colours also feature in the college's coat of arms, which depicts three mullets in chevron reversed gules, between six crosses crosslet fitched sable.