St. Catherine's is one of the newest and largest of Oxford's colleges. Its roots go back to 1868 with the establishment of the Delegacy for Unattached Students, later known as the Delegacy for Non-Collegiate Students, which allowed men to matriculate as students of the University without having to belong to a college. Over time the society became popularly known as St Catherine’s and in 1931 the Delegacy was formally renamed the St Catherine’s Society. The Society became a full residential college in 1962. The college site was designed by Arne Jacobsen in the 1960’s and the original buildings are now Grade-I listed. Famous alumni include Benazir Bhutto, Joseph Heller, Eric Williams, Jeanette Winterson, Matthew Pinsent, and John Cornforth.
The archives are small and primarily administrative. A small amount of material from the Non-Collegiate era has survived, particularly student publications. There is also material relating to the Jacobsen buildings, including photographs and architectural comment, however the archives do not hold a complete set of architectural plans. The archive holds few private papers of fellows or alumni.
Archivist: Barbara Costa
Opening hours: not generally open to the public, by appointment only.
Address: St Catherine’s College, Manor Road, Oxford OX1 3UJ
E-mail: library@stcatz.ox.ac.uk
Web: http://www.stcatz.ox.ac.uk/Library/Archive
Further reading:
Roger Ainsworth and Clare Howell (eds), St Catherine’s, Oxford: A Pen Portrait (London 2012)
Margaret and Derek Davies, Creating St Catherine’s College (Oxford 1997)
Alan Bullock, ‘“A Scotch University added to Oxford”? The Non-Collegiate Students’ in The History of the University of Oxford Vol. VII, ed. M.G. Brock and M.C. Curthoys (Oxford 2000)
Don Barton, Anu Dudhia and Tony Hancox, A History of St Catherine’s Rowing 1875 – 1999 (2nd Edition Oxford 2000)
