File contains:
1) Letter from Rosemary Murray to Robin Hammond relating to the setting up of New Hall, addressed from Girton College [1954] - the letter reads as follows:
‘Hurray, howrah, hurah, hoorah, how does one spell the word - any way you know what I mean. I am so thrilled that you will be coming. Are you prepared for the tiresomenesses that are bound to arise - I hope so! I think we have got a nice elderly Scottish body as a housekeeper which is a relief of one worry. We get the Hermitage on 1 May so soon after that will you come & we will look at it & finally decide on rooms etc. I hope you don’t wish you were going to St Hugh’s as English Tutor, I see they are advertising. Would you like a medical student (or two) as lodgers in your flat? But I think perhaps they would want to be there rather longer than you would want them.’
2) ‘Early days NH for 23.7.77.’, comprising 14 pages of handwritten notes presumably used by Robin Hammond for a talk or speech in 1977. She describes the diversity of the rooms at the Hermitage and their uses; she mentions Miss Dufton, Housekeeper, and other domestic arrangements and the gardens; she mentions that as an undergraduate at Girton twenty years earlier she had heard in the Mistress’ address ‘You must remember that women are in Cambridge on sufferance’ and discusses the position of women in Cambridge generally; she talks of the name of the College, saying ‘we hoped Joe Bloggs would give the money and have the College called after him. Still hoping - - ‘; she describes early director of studies and supervision arrangements and Library donations - ‘we were taught how to catalogue by the then Librarian of Girton’; she refers to Rosemary Murray acting as gardener, electrician and plumber and tells an anecdote relating to the fixing of a toilet at Bredon House; she describes the makeup of Council including Lady Whitby as chair; appointment of senior members, mention of Helen Clover; need for conventionality to fit in with the rest of the university yet not wishing to copy existing colleges; number of former WRNS officers in the early days, including Rosemary Murray, Miss Dufton and Helen Clover; acquisition of other houses as hostels; the move to ‘New New Hall’ in 1964 and the official opening by the Queen Mother; and she quotes Diana Rowntree in The Guardian - ‘Like an exotic cygnet that turns out to be a homely duck, the Saracenic extravagances of NH have finally composed themselves into a most respectable College’.
3) Captions from a Library exhibition [2012?] of a copy of Dr Samuel Johnson’s Dictionary of the English Language [donated to the Library in memory of Robin Hammond by her nieces at the Alumnae Weekend in September 2011] at which the above letter was also exhibited.