By the early years of the 20th century Somerville was having difficulty in accommodating all its students, and was also beginning to feel the need for a large single space where everyone could meet and eat together.
In 1910 the college wrote to the University suggesting that many Somervillians who were not in a position to make a large donation towards such a project might nonetheless be happy to advance sums of money to the college at a moderate rate of interest. Their proposal was adopted, and the resulting buildings were financed entirely by the contributions of members and friends of the college, £6,000 being received in donations and £11,000 raised by debentures.
The architect selected, was H.A.L. Fisher’s brother Edmund, who, after training in the office of Basil Champneys, had made his name designing a fine series of elementary schools, in ‘Queen-Anne-ish’ classical style, in the neighbouring county of Berkshire. Commissioned now to design a range of buildings incorporating a large dining hall, kitchens, private dining hall and senior common room, Fisher adopted the slightly simpler, and more economical, “Wrenaissance” style. This style was to characterise many women’s university residences in England during the first third of the 20th century. The hall was originally intended to be built in stone, but cost considerations made brick a more viable option.
Edmund Fisher’s early death in 1918, following active service in France, means that the Somerville buildings constitute his major single architectural achievement. The hall, a pedimented two-storey building with seven bays, dominates the east side of the college garden, the large windows drawing attention to the importance of the upper floor where the dining hall itself is situated. In designing the dining hall Fisher ingeniously adapted the traditional Oxbridge arrangement of two entrances into the body of the hall from a passage opposite the daïs by turning the passage through ninety degrees and running it along the side of the hall, thereby allowing for three entrances. Windows of larger than conventional classical proportions along the west side produce an overall effect less sombre than the dark colouring of the walls themselves. On sunny afternoons and evenings the hall is flooded with light. The panelling of the south wall was specially designed to frame the newly-acquired portrait of Mary Somerville by John Jackson, presented by an anonymous donor, whilst a fine sequence of principalian portraits has subsequently colonised the walls to the north and east.
At the official opening ceremony in October 1913 Professor Gilbert Murray voiced the college’s pride in its new hall:
We are proud of its dignity and beauty, of its severity and magnificent proportions. It seems to me unlike any other hall in Oxford; it does not ape the manner of another age, but stands on its own foundations, with its own character, as a fine specimen of the work of the early 20th century… We are fit to take our place among the great halls of Oxford.
On 22 June 1914 the new hall was proudly used for a commemoration ball. Early occupants of the residential building that autumn included Dorothy L. Sayers, then in her final year, and Vera Brittain in her first. Their stay there was brief because in April 1915 Somerville‘s buildings were requisitioned by the War Office for use as a military hospital. The hall was converted into a hospital ward, with a bathroom installed in one corner and the oak floor and panelling covered with deal. Because Somerville had a large number of small rooms, it was deemed by the military authorities to be particularly suitable for use as a hospital for officers, and in 1916 the whole college was reserved for this purpose. At this stage the hall ceased to be used as a ward, and was transformed into an officers’ mess. Among the patients who passed through the Somerville hospital were poets Robert Graves and Siegfried Sassoon; the latter, recovering from gastric fever in August 1916, thought that:
to be lying in a little white-walled room, looking through the open window on to a College lawn, was for the first few days, very much like Paradise.
It was not until Michaelmas Term 1919 that Somerville regained possession of its own buildings, and the hall returned to more orthodox usage, providing a setting not only for meals but also for lectures, meetings, plays, concerts and dances, and for Sunday prayers.
The dining hall was allocated grade II listed building status in 1954.
Adams, P., Chapter 3, in Breaking New Ground: A History of Somerville College as seen through its buildings, A. Manuel, Editor. 2013: Oxford.
The basic dining hall dimensions are: