Hub for current students
Three men in formal attire walk down a corridor. Two men on the sides wear gowns over suits, while the man in the center is in a suit with a coat, holding a briefcase. They appear to be in a professional or academic setting.

1965

Building nears completion

  • Death of the Founder, Sir Winston
  • Governing Body votes to rescind men-only clause in its Charter
  • Bevin and Bracken Libraries and Wolfson Hall opened by the Lord Chancellor
  • The Library includes an archives room
  • Wolfson Flats completed
  • Prime Minister Harold Wilson cancels visit owing to Rhodesia crisis
  • Original West Court abandoned, leaving vista to playing fields open
  • Wolfson Foundation provides £300,000 for (reduced) final residential court
  • First Churchill Association annual dinner, in London
  • Copy of William Orpen portrait of the Founder (hanging in Hall) gifted by the Trustees

Asim Datta (G65) comments:

I was admitted as a postgraduate married student at Churchill College in 1965. This photo of myself and my wife Ranjita Datta was taken in 1966 on the open field between just introduced first block of flats for married students at the background and Churchill College building during 1966. Incidentally we were the first ever occupiers of married students’ flats arranged on an emergency basis before the formal opening of the flats. This was because Cambridge had a spell of severe cold weather in early 1966 and my wife became very ill with flu when we were living in a dig. The college doctor who came to see her decided to take her to the college sick bay. At that time the college was only for male students so her admission to college sick bay was another exception and perhaps she was only female patient in sick bay in the duration when college was exclusively for male students.

Nathan Dean (G65) comments:

I arrived in 1965 as one of ten Churchill Scholars, the first full group of American graduate students following smaller startup groups in 1963 and 1964. The Master, Sir John Cockroft, and Lady Cockroft invited us all to a sherry party to get acquainted. Four of us had brought our wives with us to Cambridge, and we eight quickly became friends. Soon we got to know other Churchill couples, initially Canadians, Aussies, and Kiwis who, like us, were strangers in a strange land, but also couples among our wonderful British hosts.

The Wolfson flats were not completed, but the college found us a great flat on Gilbert Road. Unlike the other Churchill Scholars, who mostly were spending one year at Churchill, I had come for three years to do my PhD with Richard Eden in the Cavendish. I shared an office there, just off Free School Lane. We had a car, but parking there was impossible, so I cycled across Jesus Green and back every day. I don’t remember it raining, but the streets were always wet.

But I also frequented the college – especially the buttery – and enjoyed Churchill student life as well. We four American couples met for dinner in hall weekly until the wives decided they preferred their own cooking. We guys joined in football games – both ‘soccer’ and US football – on the college fields. It was the start of three life-changing years.

4 November: Arrival of the Barbara Hepworth sculpture “Squares with two Circles” and erection on the rear lawn. Photo by Nick Denbow (U&G64).