One of the last acts was to preside on February 3, 1892 at a meeting which recommended the Council to build a college gateway; the gateway which was to symbolise the concentration of the work—for the public pathway had just been closed—and the attollite portas to ever fresh generations of students. Its bronze gates are the old students’ memorial of her. And on the morning of October 27, 1892, she died, in her room on the garden at Newnham, looking out at the gathering light of the new day.
She was buried with the honours of the head of a college, the Provost and fellows of King’s offering their chapel for the purpose. She lies in the village church-yard of Grantchester, the civitatula which Bede describes where the sons of Ely monastery came to fetch the sarcophagus for S. Etheldreda. So in her death she is not divided from the great memories which link the history of the university to that of the movement to which she gave her life.
The first 28 students came into residence in Newnham Hall on October 18th 1875, and found the moment no less thrilling because they approached the door of their alma mater across planks and unfinished masonry. More room was at once needed, and “Norwich House” in the town was hired. In 1879 the Newnham Hall Company and the Association for promoting the Higher Education of Women[469] amalgamated, and as “the Newnham College Association for advancing education and learning among women in Cambridge” built the second, or North Hall. Thus Newnham Hall became Newnham College. A public pathway led between the two halls, and this was not closed till 1891; but in 1886 a still larger building, containing the college hall, was erected, and called Clough Hall, the original Newnham (“South”) Hall becoming the “Old Hall,” and the North Hall becoming “Sidgwick Hall.” Lastly the two original halls were joined by the “Pfeiffer building”[470] and the college gateway in 1893, and in 1897 Mr. and Mrs. Yates Thompson presented a fine library, the pretty old library of Newnham Hall which had been built in 1882, being converted into a reading room. The land for the three Halls was purchased from S. John’s College, the hockey field is on Clare land, and the total acreage is about ten and a half acres. The college holds 160 students, a few ‘out students’ being affiliated to one or other of the halls—and consists of a large hall, capable of seating 400 persons, a smaller hall and reading room in each building, the library, nine lecture and class rooms, gymnasium, small hospital, chemical laboratory, and the Balfour laboratory in the town which is a freehold of the college. The grounds contain two fives courts, lawn tennis courts, and a hockey ground. In the hall are the portraits of Miss Clough, Professor and Mrs. Sidgwick, and Miss M. G. Kennedy, as the four people who had given most of their life work to Newnham.[471]
The fees vary from £30 to £35 a term according to
the rooms occupied. The college is governed by a Council, and presided over by a Principal, Old Hall Sidgwick Hall and Clough Hall having each a resident vice-principal.[472] Miss Clough hoped to effect a real and lasting union between the old students and Newnham—that the college might be the support of the students, and the students of the college. It was a principle she had always present to her mind, and she herself did much to realise it. School and college have long bestowed this advantage on men, which is reinforced by the support men are accustomed to give to each other; but all this is lacking for the woman who goes forth into the world to fend for herself. University life might however do much to supply the want, and it is to be hoped that women will form a tradition on the point, as men have done. The constitution of the college at least preserves some part of its first Principal’s idea, old students have from the first had a share in the government and a place on the Council.