Homerton College | |
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The Cavendish Building, Homerton College
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University | Cambridge University |
Location | Hills Road (map) |
Motto | Respice Finem (Latin) |
Motto in English | Look to the end |
Established | 1768 |
Named for | Homerton, London |
Previous names | Homerton Academy (1768-1852) Training Institution of the Congregational Board of Education (1852-1894) |
Sister college |
Harris Manchester College, Oxford Mansfield College, Oxford |
Principal | Geoff Ward |
Undergraduates | 600 |
Postgraduates | 800 |
Website | www |
JCR | www |
MCR | www |
Boat club | www |
Homerton College is a constituent college of the University of Cambridge in England. Its first premises were acquired in London in 1768, by an informal gathering of Protestant dissenters with origins in the seventeenth century. In 1894 the College moved from Homerton High Street, Hackney, London, to Cambridge, and received its Royal Charter in 2010, affirming its status as a full college of the university. The College will be celebrating its 250th anniversary in 2018.
With around 600 undergraduates, 800 graduates, and 90 fellows, it has more students than any other Cambridge college, but because only half of these are resident undergraduates its undergraduate presence is similar to large colleges such as Trinity and St John's. Homerton has educated alumni of considerable influence – including prominent dissenting thinkers, educationalists, politicians, and missionary explorers. In this sense, the College has particularly strong ties to public service as well as academia.
Homerton was admitted as an "Approved Society" of the university in 1976, and was granted full college status by the university in 2010. The College has extensive grounds which encompass sports fields, water features, beehives and the focal point of the college, its Victorian Gothic hall. It also has a wide range of student clubs and societies, including Homerton College Boat Club, Homerton College Music Society and the Homerton College Rugby Football Club. In 2011 and 2012 the college was also selected to field a team on University Challenge.
In 1850 Homerton Academy in London, a dissenting academy already having a history stretching back to 1695, was refounded by the Congregational Board of Education to concentrate on the study of education itself. It did so by transferring its theological courses to New College London, whose Congregationalist Principal was the Rev. John Harris DD, and by extending and rebuilding the old mansion house and 1820s buildings of the academy at a cost of £10,000. The college reopened as the Training Institution of the Congregational Board of Education in April 1852, with Samuel Morley as its Treasurer. Shortly afterwards, it began admitting women students, although then Principal Horobin ultimately called an end to mixed education in 1896, shortly after the move to Cambridge, and thereafter the college remained all-women for 80 years.