[2] St Cuthbert's Society is a Bailey college, based on Durham's peninsula next to the River Wear, although it also has other accommodation a few minutes' walk away in Old Elvet.

[4] To arrest declining numbers of entrants, Durham University began to allow the admission of 'unattached' students from Michaelmas term of 1871.

While still expected to follow the normal regulations of the university (such as attending morning prayer at Durham Cathedral and wearing academic gowns in public), the manner of their living enabled a privacy that was "often the envy" of fellow students.

Initially under the supervision of a junior proctor, who appointed a Senior Man from one of their number, they did not have anything that could be called an organisation, with no clubs of their own and no common room to provide a permanent meeting place.

[6] The society gained a common room in 1893 when the university granted it space in Cosin's Hall, and this was to effectively be its 'home' for the next fifty years.

[8] On the other hand, it was developing a distinct collegiate identity through participation in sport, and it was to St Cuthbert's Society (not to the unattached) that the university gave the use of facilities like the common room and boat house.

[9] With the death of Queen Victoria and the onset of the Edwardian era, there was a gradual shift in the political positions taken by Cuthbert's men.

Whereas before they had tended to exemplify traditional values, like support for the Empire and a belief that "the working classes should be kept firmly in their place", reformist opinion now occasionally surfaced.

[13] This "tacit agreement to ignore the war" was discarded in January 1916 when the Military Service Act was passed, which conscripted all unmarried men between 18 and 41.

Compared to other academic institutions, St Cuthbert's Society suffered relatively few deaths during the war, as many of its members had been regimental chaplains.

When the society moved to the South Bailey in 1951, it began to offer accommodation to a small number of students and created the position of principal to replace that of censor.

The first principal, Clifford Leech, a distinguished academic and widely acknowledged expert on Jacobean literature, served for several years in this role before going on to become professor of English at the University of Toronto.

St Cuthbert's also has a strong historical rivalry with nearby Hatfield College, which manifests itself in sports and other activities as well as singing songs (of varying degrees of offensiveness).

There is a story that, in the 1960s, a group of Cuth's students stole a lion statue from Hatfield and painted it to look like a tiger, to avoid arousing suspicion.The original seventh-century pectoral cross of St. Cuthbert was discovered when his grave was opened in 1827, and is now preserved in the cathedral treasury.

House 12 contains the headquarters to the society, the Bailey Bar, the JCR, the dining room - seating 150 hosting many dinners and formals,[15] and a garden.

Returning students typically live in Brooks House, with other buildings at Parsons Field being primarily for first year undergraduates.