St Mary's College, Durham

St Mary's College is a college of Durham University in England. Following the grant of a supplemental charter in 1895 allowing women to receive degrees of the university, St Mary's was founded as the Women's Hostel in 1899, adopting its present name in May 1920.HistoryFoundingSt Mary's original location was at 33 Claypath with six students before moving into Abbey House and then to The College behind Durham Cathedral. This is now occupied by the Chorister School. It is one of the Hill colleges on Elvet Hill, having been situated there since it moved into the Fergusson Building on the new site in 1952. The foundation stone for the Fergusson Building was laid in 1947 by Her Royal Highness Princess Elizabeth. Of all the colleges currently located on the Hill, St Mary's is the only one to have been founded in the 19th century.Change to a mixed collegeFor several decades there had been debates about St Mary’s continuing as a single-sex college within the University, and it had been originally mooted in the 1970s that it should go mixed. The Middle Common Room, which consisted of postgraduate students, went mixed in the early 1990s. St Mary's was the last of Durham's colleges to become entirely mixed when it took in both males and females at undergraduate level in 2005, ending over a hundred years of tradition. During the decision-making process the student body was split. Some members of the College felt so strongly against the proposed plans in 2000 that they protested, marching on the University Offices at Old Shire Hall. There had been several polls of the student body over the issue of the College going mixed, and from 1999 onwards these were held almost annually. The results tended to be close, but marginally in favour of retaining the status quo.