Murray Edwards College, Cambridge

New Hall was founded in 1954, housing sixteen students in Silver Street where Darwin College now stands. Cambridge then had the lowest proportion of women undergraduates of any university in the United Kingdom and only two other colleges (Girton and Newnham) admitted female students. In 1962, members of the Darwin family gave their home, "The Orchard", to the College. This new site was located on Huntingdon Road, about a mile from the centre of Cambridge. The architects chosen were Chamberlin, Powell and Bon, who are known for their design of the Barbican in London, and fundraising commenced. The building work began in 1964 and was completed by W. & C. French in 1965. The new college could…

Like many of the other Cambridge colleges, Murray Edwards College was not built all at one time but expanded as the need arose, over several time periods. The college therefore has several accommodation blocks of differing styles. In order of construction: The first buildings of the college on Huntingdon Road were designed by the architects, Chamberlin, Powell and Bon, and are listed Grade II* (particularly important buildings of more than special interest). This includes:

Murray Edwards is home to The Women's Art Collection (known until 2022 as the New Hall Art Collection), the largest collection of women's art in Europe, and the second largest in the world (the largest being the National Museum of Women in the Arts in Washington, D.C.). The artwork can be seen throughout College, and students are encouraged to request pieces to be brought into their bedrooms as decoration. The New Hall Art Collection was started in the early 1990s, when New Hall had few pieces of art and most of them were portraits of old gentleman. The college president wrote to 100 women artists and asked each to donate one piece of art, and more than 75% of the artists approached agreed…