Dining Hall, Darwin College

Summary

College dining hall, designed 1965-1966 and built 1967-1969 to the designs of Bill Howell of Howell Killick Partridge and Amis, with Felix J Samuely and Partners as engineers.

Reasons for Designation

Darwin College dining hall, built between 1967 and 1969 to the designs of Bill Howell of Howell Killick Partridge & Amis, is listed at Grade II for the following principal reasons:

Architectural interest: * as an important university building by Howell Killick Partridge & Amis, a celebrated architectural firm with a number of listed university and residential buildings to their name; * as a creative solution for a restricted site, with careful consideration given to the expressed form, materials and their finish; * as an inventive post-war interpretation of a college dining hall, and the successful balancing of traditional typological and contextual architectural forms within a modernist structure.

Historic interest: * as a progression of nearly eight centuries of college construction within the University of Cambridge; * for its place in the highly significant body of post-Second World War university architecture in England.

Group value: * for the building's proximity to, and functional affinity with the buildings of Darwin College, including the early-C19 granary, Newnham Grange, the Hermitage, and the Rayne Building, each listed at Grade II.

History

The house at the corner of Silver Street and Newnham Road, now known as the Hermitage, was constructed in 1853. It was purchased around 1870 by Dr Stephen Parkinson, a celebrated teacher of mathematics at St John’s, who greatly enlarged, improved and renamed the house ‘The Hermitage’. On her death in 1913, Mrs Parkinson (later Mrs Cobb) left the Hermitage to the Master, Fellows and Scholars of St John’s College. In 1954 St John’s assigned a lease to the Association for Promoting a Third Foundation for Women in the University, and thus the Hermitage became the birth-place of New Hall (now Murray Edwards), being leased to them until their new buildings on Huntingdon Road were ready in 1965. George Howard Darwin (1845-1912), the second son and fifth child of Charles and Emma Darwin, succeeded as Plumian Professor of Astronomy and Experimental Philosophy at Cambridge in 1883, and acquired the neighbouring house, now known as Newnham Grange, as his family residence in 1885. Newnham Grange remained in the Darwin family until the death of Sir Charles Galton Darwin in 1962, after which it was purchased by the Masters and Fellows of Gonville and Caius, St John’s and Trinity Colleges, who announced their intention to found a new college exclusively for graduate students named Darwin College. St John’s sold the Hermitage to Darwin College in 1966.

New buildings were needed to provide graduate accommodation, a pronounced entrance to the new college, and a dining hall to seat 130. These had to fit around the existing college buildings, filling gaps and providing links between Newnham Grange, the Hermitage, and Newnham Terrace to the south, built in 1851 (which the college did not yet own but were planning to purchase). The architectural firm of Howell Killick Partridge and Amis (HKPA) were approached in 1963 to prepare designs. The firm came to prominence with their entry to the competition for Churchill College in 1959, where their scheme, though not the winner, was highly admired and led to commissions at Oxford and Birmingham universities. At Cambridge they also designed the University Graduate Centre at Granta Place (1964-7, listed at Grade II), a senior combination room at Downing College, and student accommodation at Sidney Sussex College (both 1967-9). At Darwin College, they contributed a Dining Hall and the four-storey Rayne Building fronting Silver Street, so named in recognition of the generous benefaction from the Rayne Foundation for the construction of both it and the Dining Hall (at a cost of £211,000). The Rayne Building provided a gatehouse to the college, an accommodation block of 34 study bedrooms, and a vital internal link between Newnham Grange and the Hermitage. Between the Hermitage and Newnham Terrace, HKPA added a first-floor Dining Hall, elevated on pilotis over a small car park, allowing views from the road through to the gardens beyond (now somewhat obscured by mature planting and the addition on a partial screen wall on the right side); a glazed link between the Dining Hall and Newnham Terrace was realised around 2003. Howell intended that the new buildings should blend unobtrusively with their neighbours; they were one of the first HPKA designs to use brick as a facing material, drawing inspiration from the silvery tones of Sir Giles Gilbert Scott’s nearby Clare Memorial Court. The new scheme was written up in both the Architectural Review and Building journals in 1970 and achieved a Civic Trust commendation in 1971.

Details

College dining hall, designed 1965-1966 and built 1967-1969 to the designs of Bill Howell of Howell Killick Partridge and Amis, with Felix J Samuely and Partners as engineers.

MATERIALS: the roof has a lead covering, and the reinforced steel frame is faced in grey-brown brick and shuttered concrete.

PLAN: the dining hall is roughly octagonal on plan and raised over a ground-floor car park by four reinforced-concrete pilotis; a spiral stair projects from the east side.

EXTERIOR: the first-floor dining hall is raised by four reinforced-concrete pilotis over an open car park. The lead-covered roof is nearly pyramidal on plan with a central octagonal-pyramid glazed lantern. Oversailing eaves have horizontal bands of shuttered concrete to their fascia and joists which project through a glazed clerestory. The walls of the hall are constructed of grey-brown brick with greenish mortar to cool the overall tone of the brickwork, and have bands of shuttered concrete under the clerestory and to the plinth. The west elevation to Newnham Road is blind with the exception of two full-height vertical slit windows to each of the chamfered corners. The east elevation overlooking the garden has a large glazed opening comprising metal-framed folding and sliding French doors, a shuttered concrete lintel, and a large rectangular overlight. Again, the chamfered corners have two full-height vertical slit windows. A canted stair landing and wide spiral stair with a terrazzo covering and plain metal handrail on slender stick balusters, descends to the ground-floor car park below. The south elevation of the dining hall has a glazed link, approximately 1.5m wide, to the first floor of Newnham Terrace to the south. Within the undercroft, the underside of the hall and the pilotis are concrete shuttered.

INTERIOR: The interior of the Dining Hall is of unplastered brick, with a natural pine ceiling resting on reinforced concrete beams, from which timber beams splay upwards to a central octagonal lantern. Four strips of roof lighting illuminate the hall from above, while narrow slit windows on the chamfered corners provide glimpses of trees round the perimeter of the room. To the side of the slit windows, a window opening mechanism opens small clerestory windows above. Each chamfered corner has a concrete hood over a large mirror at eye height, which provide ‘a series of inter-reflections’ (HKPA). On the garden side, large folding and sliding doors give access to the stair landing and balcony overlooking the garden and river beyond. Access is provided from the Hermitage by a flat-arched opening on the north wall, with a shuttered-concrete lintel. There is an opposing opening on the south wall, formerly infilled with glass and now with a glazed link to Newnham Terrace to the south (realised around 2003).

This list entry was subject to a Minor Amendment on 14 September 2023 to correct a typo in the description

Sources

Books and journals
Bradley, Simon, Pevsner, Nikolaus, The Buildings of England: Cambridgeshire, (2014), 82-3
Cantacuzino, S, Howell Killick Partridge and Amis, (1981)
Franklin, Geraint, Howell Killick Partridge & Amis, (2017)
Keynes, Margaret, A House by the River. Newnham Grange to Darwin College – a history of the site, buildings and former inhabitants, (1984)
Leedham-Green, Elizabeth, Walston, Catharine, Darwin College – A 50th Anniversary Portrait, (2013)
'New Buildings for Darwin College, Cambridge' in Building, , Vol. 219, no.6641, (21 August 1970), 43-7
'HKPA Cantab – Three College Buildings at Cambridge' in Architectural Review, (June 1970), 442-6
Other
Custance, William, Map of Cambridge, (1798)
Loggan, David, Cantabrigia Illustrata, (1688)

End of official list entry